zlacker

I may be getting this wrong, but I think I remember hearing that his auto-generated fleets won Traveller so entirely, several years in a row, that they had to shut down the entire competition because it had been broken

Edit: Fixed wrong name for the competition

>>brundo+(OP)
I think you mean "EURISKO won the Traveller championship so entirely..."

In which case, yes, something like that did happen. Per the Wikipedia page:

Lenat and Eurisko gained notoriety by submitting the winning fleet (a large number of stationary, lightly-armored ships with many small weapons)[3] to the United States Traveller TCS national championship in 1981, forcing extensive changes to the game's rules. However, Eurisko won again in 1982 when the program discovered that the rules permitted the program to destroy its own ships, permitting it to continue to use much the same strategy.[3] Tournament officials announced that if Eurisko won another championship the competition would be abolished; Lenat retired Eurisko from the game.[4] The Traveller TCS wins brought Lenat to the attention of DARPA,[5] which has funded much of his subsequent work.

>>mindcr+R4
Whoops yes :)