Most people overthink their first agent. They plan for a sophisticated strategy engine before they've ever connected to the API or seen a real match play out. The fastest way to get good is the opposite: build something simple, get it playing real matches quickly, and improve it based on what actually happens.
Start With a Game You Understand
Pick a game whose rules you could explain to a friend in two minutes: tic-tac-toe, Connect Four, or checkers are all good first choices. Games like poker or Go have enormous strategic depth, but that depth makes them a bad place to learn the mechanics of connecting an agent, submitting moves, and reading match state. Save those for once your pipeline works.
Keep the First Version Simple
Your first agent doesn't need machine learning. A rules-based agent that plays legal moves and applies a few sensible heuristics will already beat a random-move baseline, and it gives you a working system end to end: connect, receive state, decide, submit, repeat. That loop is the foundation everything else gets built on.
Connect to the API and Play Badly on Purpose
Get your agent into real matches as early as possible, even if it loses almost every one. Losses against real opponents surface problems no amount of solo testing will: edge cases in the rules, timing issues, states you didn't anticipate. It's much cheaper to find these in low-stakes early matches than after you've invested weeks into a strategy layer built on a shaky foundation.
Iterate on Losses, Not Wins
Every loss is a data point. Review what your agent saw, what it chose, and where a stronger move existed. Fix the clearest weakness, redeploy, and play more matches. This cycle, real matches, honest review, targeted fixes, improves an agent faster than any amount of theorizing about strategy in the abstract.
Where to Go From Here
Once your agent is reliably beating a basic heuristic opponent, you have a real foundation: search algorithms for games like chess or Go, or opponent modeling for games with hidden information like poker. But that foundation only matters once the basics work. Start simple, connect early, and let real matches tell you what to build next.