1 / 7
AAaron
The Analyzer Award
★ Pattern-spotter
You have a sharp eye for finding weaknesses. You carefully watched other bots, spotted their patterns, and turned those observations into smarter strategies.
Snake-Lab AI Camp
Camp Recap
Awards, student photos, feedback, and the little quotes that made the room feel alive.
Camp awards · slides 57-63
Award Photo Slideshow
The camp award photos and the award-slide wording are paired together here, one student at a time.
2 / 7
EEthan
The Persistent Creator Award
★ Never quits
Your patience and creativity stood out. You kept improving your bot step by step, proving that small improvements can lead to big results.
3 / 7
LLucas
The Creative Thinker Award
★ Out-of-the-box
You looked beyond the obvious and found clever ways to use the game rules to your advantage. Your out-of-the-box thinking inspired everyone.
4 / 7
JJoseph
The Master Strategist Award
★ Plans ahead
You understood that winning isn’t just about one move - it’s about having a plan. Your phased strategies and long-term thinking made your bot stronger.
5 / 7
AAndy
The Good Sport Award
★ Team spirit
You brought a calm, positive attitude to every challenge. You followed the rules, respected everyone, and created bots that reflected your playful personality.
6 / 7
OOllie
The Thoughtful Learner Award
★ Quick study
You listened carefully to teachers and classmates, stayed patient, and quickly turned new ideas into smart solutions.
7 / 7
MMatthew
The Detail Master Award
★ Precision
You paid attention to every detail and carefully thought through your strategies. Your thorough approach showed that great engineering is built one detail at a time.
1 / 7
Fun part
The Room Was Loud in the Best Way
The food, the bot names, the sudden crashes, and the things kids yelled while watching the snakes.
Lucas, watching the snake: this guy is a pro eater, Tina is not getting anything.
Ollie: Go Bagel!!! Bagel (bot name and his dog’s name) eats a lot, I’m creating it to represent real life Bagel!
Ethan: It's fun, like the food.
Joseph: I think it’s fun, the food in the game you can’t change.
Ollie: fun, also fun with home work challenge
Aaron changed a few settings of the game code. The game broke, and everyone yelled: Aaron broke the game!
Fun fact: one student built a very strong Monte Carlo simulation bot. It was so ambitious that it froze the game engine, which is how we learned that even brilliant bots need a move-time limit.
Fun fact — after camp: the discoveries kept coming. The final boss of our Gomoku ladder is Rapfi, a champion engine that is supposed to be unbeatable — and Lucas beat it, by noticing that restarting the game while the engine was thinking made it play silly moves. He had found a real race condition — the kind of tricky bug professional engineers hunt for a living. (We fixed it. The wall is a wall again — rematch, anyone?)
Learning part
They Started Reading Strategies, Not Just Playing
The best camp moments were when a name, a rule, or a crash turned into a strategy.
Teacher: Achilles is the bot name. Do you know who Achilles is?
We explained Achilles, the almost-unbeatable Greek hero with one famous heel weakness, and that the bot name is a clue: strong, aggressive, but not perfect.
Kids' aha moment: so Careful Carl is careful, Random Randy is random, Greedy Gus is greedy!
Lucas, watching the bot: I keep on getting massive lead, but I keep on dying, oh I know the problem, I’m gonna to ask chatgpt.
Ethan, working on a challenge: please, I get up to 30, I need to get at least negative 40 percent!
Aaron: It's very good, coding is fun, using AI is fun.
Ethan, describe his bot: It’s not very good, it’s hitting the wall, but I will fix it!
Aaron describes his bot: keep on dodging, stay in the safe middle, don’t eat much.
Teacher comment: that’s why your bot beat Apex, because Apex is an aggressive hunter, and your bot is super cautious, 3 spaces away from the opponent.
Aaron beats Achilles by manual play: I found Achilles' heel!
Teacher: What's the weakness?
Aaron: It chases you very close, but didn’t pay attention to the tail when I eat.
Matthew, describe his bot: it’s pretty good! It’s not good at challenges, but good at tournaments. Ollie shared the opposite.
Teacher comments: that's what you will learn, no single best strategy bot.
Matthew shared his strategy in the tournaments: you can change the strategy during the game. At the beginning, you play really safe and don’t eat and later you eat a lot but still try to be safe.
Teacher agreed: at the beginning it’s 7 players in a very small space, so dodging, looking for open space, and staying away from opponents is really important.
Thinking / feedback part
What They Noticed
Feedback was not just “I liked it.” They noticed people, controls, graphics, lag, strategy, fairness, and what should change next.
What felt good
Lucas: good: people, overall experience
Andy: agree with Lucas, game is good
Matthew: good but hard to control
Aaron: It's very good, coding is fun, using AI is fun.
What felt hard
Lucas: bad: lag, ugly: graphic
Andy: hard to control
Matthew: super ugly
Joseph: the food in the game you can’t change.
Fairness and credit
After Andy won the grand prize of 5 round tournaments with +10 points, just 1 point ahead of Matthew, Ollie said it’s Matthew’s idea! Matthew should win the grand prize.
Ollie wins the first round of king snake tournaments, and he gives credit to Matthew.
Keep Playing After Camp
The same games are still open: play by hand, climb the challenge ladder, then bring a smarter bot back next time.
Third day reflection
Fullness of Joy
On the third day of camp, I shared this verse with the group.
You will show me the path of life;
In Your presence is fullness of joy;
At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
We had fun at camp because we know that fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore are what God wills for us to enjoy.