The Tenth Annual Trading Agent Competition - Call for Participation
July 13 - 15, 2009
Pasadena, CA, USA
Collocated with IJCAI-09
Trading in electronic markets is increasingly becoming both a
commonplace economic activity and a topic of special interest within the
AI, Electronic Commerce, and Multiagent Systems (MAS) research
communities.
We invite you to participate in the Tenth Annual Trading Agent
Competition (TAC-09), to be held in June and July of 2009, with the
finals taking place during the IJCAI-09 conference in Pasadena, preceded
by qualifying and seeding rounds in June and July.
Building on the success of previous Trading Agent Competition events,
this year's event is again designed to spur research on common problems,
promote definitions of benchmarks and standard problem descriptions, and
showcase current technologies.
The competition will pit software agents -- developed by research
groups, students, and others from all over the world -- against each
other in challenging market games. This year, there will be three games,
and two related challenge events:
TAC Ad Auctions (AA). In the new TAC/AA game, agents representing
Internet advertisers bid for search-engine ad placement over a range of
interrelated keyword combinations. A back-end search-user model
translates placement over each simulated day to impressions, clicks,
and sale conversions, yielding revenue for the advertiser. Advertiser
strategies combining online data analysis and bidding tac tics compete
to maximize profit over the simulated campaign horizon.
TAC Market Design (reverse TAC, or "CAT"). CAT software agents
represent market makers whose goals are to attract potential buyers and
sellers as customers, and then to match buyers with sellers. The market
makers compete with one another in doing this, such as the London Stock
Exchange competes with the NYSE for the business of stock traders.
TAC Supply Chain Management (SCM). TAC/SCM simulates a dynamic supply
chain environment where agents compete to secure customer orders and
components required for production of these orders. The game captures
many of the complexities of actual supply chains, where both demand and
supply fluctuate and each manufacturer has limited production
capacity. Participants also have the option of entering two SCM
Challenge events: a Procurement Challenge and a Prediction Challenge.
The market games have been specially designed to present agents with
difficult decision problems and admit a wide variety of potential
bidding and negotiation strategies.
Preliminary documentation and software for participating in the AA
Tournament are accessible at:
Preliminary documentation and software for participating in the CAT
Tournament are accessible via sourceforge. Access details and other CAT
information is available at:
The qualifying and seeding rounds will be held in June and July, and the
first day of the final rounds is scheduled to coincide with the Trading
Agent Design and Analysis (TADA) workshop to be held at IJCAI-09.
To register for TAC-09, please fill out the registration form at:
The entry fee will be US$250 per team to enter one game, or $400 for all
TAC games. For TAC SCM the entry fee is the same independently of the
number of challenge events in which a team competes.
The entry fee is waived for teams who send a representative to the TAC
finals at IJCAI-09, if that representative registers for the TADA
workshop. A given individual may represent one team for one game.
Note: Please send any questions regarding the fees to tac [at]
tradingagents.org. Groups unable to afford the entry fee may also
contact tac [at] tradingagents.org for special consideration.
General information about TAC can be found at:
Exact dates for the qualifying and seeding rounds will soon be posted on
this site.
More information about the Trading Agent Analysis and Design (TADA)
workshop is available at: