WallZero

WallZero is an AlphaZero-based agent for WallGo, a strategic board game popularized by the 2025 Netflix series The Devil’s Plan. Despite its small 7×7 board, the mix of stone movement and wall placement gives WallGo a large game-tree complexity (~10⁸⁷) and intricate strategy.

Abstract

WallGo is a recently introduced strategic board game popularized by the 2025 Netflix series The Devil’s Plan. Although played on a small 7 × 7 board, its combination of stone movement and wall placement yields high game-tree complexity and intricate strategic interactions. Despite its growing popularity, WallGo remains underexplored. This paper presents WallZero, an AlphaZero-based agent for the two-player WallGo setting. We introduce tailored action and feature designs to improve playing performance significantly. In the evaluation, WallZero defeats two professional Go players who participated in this study, securing on average 1.98× more territory per game. Beyond its strength, we use WallZero to assess game fairness and identify key strategies for mastering WallGo. Interestingly, our results show that the opening used in the Netflix series yields a more balanced game.

Highlights

• Built on AlphaZero (MiniZero framework) with tailored action and feature designs for WallGo’s setup and play phases.
• Defeated two professional Go players (3-dan and 9-dan), securing on average 1.98× more territory per game; win rate exceeded 90% before move 20.
• Used WallZero to assess game fairness and surface key strategies — reachability control, passing to manipulate move order, and opening choice — finding that the Netflix-series opening yields a more balanced game.

Keywords: Game of WallGo · AlphaZero · Feature Design · Strategic Analysis · Human Evaluation

Publication

Chen, H. Y., Arjonilla, J., Wu, I. C., & Wu, T. R. (2026). WallZero: Mastering the Game of WallGo with Strategic Analysis. International Conference on Computers and Games (CG 2026), Maastricht, the Netherlands, June 2026.