The researchers behind Ataraxos note that Stratego is distinctive because it involves a massive amount of hidden information that unfolds over a long time scale, similar to poker but more complex.

Unlike chess or Go, Stratego is an imperfect-information game where players know where the opponent's pieces are but not their identities until they clash. This makes it a difficult challenge for AI systems.

The team from Carnegie Mellon, MIT, New York University, and Stanford University achieved the victory despite the game's complexity, showing that high-level performance in imperfect-information games can be reached with relatively modest resources.