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Monte Carlo Reinforcement Learning for Simple Games

BeginnerGuided Project

Have you ever thought about training your own recommendation system or building your own robot or creating your own chess AI that can beat even the most experienced player? Reinforcement Learning is what you need. In this project, you will explore the basics of Reinforcement Learning and Monte Carlo Method. You will learn about training your own agent to navigate and succeed in simple and complex games/environments. Discover better ways to train your agent and how to work with the environment.

4.3 (151 Reviews)

Language

  • English

Topic

  • Artificial Intelligence

Enrollment Count

  • 792

Skills You Will Learn

  • Python, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning

Offered By

  • IBM

Platform

  • SkillsNetwork

Last Update

  • May 13, 2025
About this Guided Project

Why you should do this Guided Project

Deep Blue a chess computer beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. The game of Go is played on a 19 by 19 board and is much more difficult to play as there are about 10 to the power 360 different combinations. It was thought it would take decades before a computer beat a Go champion. But now, thanks to reinforcement learning, computers can easily beat Go champions, beat Chess Grandmasters and outperform Humans in every game. In this project, you will use Monte Carlo Reinforcement learning algorithms for the simple game Frozen lake. You will quickly grape import concepts of Reinforcement learning and apply open AI's  gym, the go-to framework for Reinforcement learning.

For example, the agent will be able to guide itself through a simple environment:

A Look at the Project Ahead

In this object you will learn how to:
  • Work with an OpenAI Gym environments
  • Explain what Reinforcement Learning is
  • Explain what Monte Carlo Method is
  • Create an agent that uses Monte Carlo Method to play Frozen Lake
  • Train and Test the agents using the Frozen Lake environment
  • Improve and update your algorithm.

What You'll Need

  • Knowledge of python programming language.

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Do I need to install any software to participate in this project?
    Everything you need to complete this project will be provided to you via the Skills Network Labs and it will all be available via a standard web browser.


  • What web browser should I use?
    The Skills Network Labs platform works best with current versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Safari.

Instructors

Artem Arutyunov

Data Scientist

Hey, Artem here! I am excited about answering new challenges with data science, machine learning and especially Reinforcement Learning. Love helping people to learn, and learn myself. Studying Math and Stats at University of Toronto, hit me up if you are from there as well.

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Joseph Santarcangelo

Senior Data Scientist at IBM

Joseph has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, his research focused on using machine learning, signal processing, and computer vision to determine how videos impact human cognition. Joseph has been working for IBM since he completed his PhD.

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