I did an AI course last year of university, and there were several sections on game programming in almost all the texts I read.. IIRC, one of the earlier phases of AI involved building machines that could play certain games (checkers, chess, othello) well...

FWIW, here are some URLs and books from the reading list.. some of them are rather thick, but I do know you can skip to the game programming section.. only problem is that you'd need to convert the principles to the language of your choice :o)

• http://www.cs.kuleuven.ac.be/~dannyd/FAI/
• P Jackson; Introduction to Expert Systems; AddisonWesley, 1989
• G F Luger and W A Stubblefield; Artificial Intelligence: Structures and Strategies for Complex Problem Solving; (3rd edition) Addison Wesley 1998
• Rich E & KNIGHT K, Artificial Intelligence 2nd Edition, McGraw Hill 1991
• Russell S & Norvig P, Artificial Intelligence A Modern Approach, Prentice-Hall Inc., 1995