BestFirst and DepthFirst Minimax Search in Practice.pdfVIP

Best-First and Depth-First Minimax Search in Practice Aske Plaat, Erasmus University, plaat@theory.lcs.mit.edu Jonathan Schaeffer, University of Alberta, jonathan@cs.ualberta.ca Wim Pijls, Erasmus University, whlmp@cs.few.eur.nl Arie de Bruin, Erasmus University, arie@cs.few.eur.nl Erasmus University, University of Alberta, Department of Computer Science, Department of Computing Science, Room H4-31, P.O. Box 1738, 615 General Services Building, 3000 DR Rotterdam, Edmonton, Alberta, The Netherlands Canada T6G 2H1 Abstract Most practitioners use a variant of the Alpha-Beta algorithm, a simple depth-first pro- cedure, for searching minimax trees. SSS*, with its best-first search strategy, reportedly offers the potential for more efficient search. However, the complex formulation of the al- gorithm and its alleged excessive memory requirements preclude its use in practice. For two decades, the search efficiency of “smart” best-first SSS* has cast doubt on the effectiveness of “dumb” depth-first Alpha-Beta. This paper presents a simple framework for calling Alpha-Beta that allows us to create a variety of algorithms, including SSS* and DUAL*. In effect, we formulate a best-first algorithm using depth-first search. Expressed in this framework SSS* is just a special case of Alpha-Beta, solving all of the perceived drawbacks of the algorithm. In practice, Alpha-Beta variants typically evaluate less nodes than SSS*. A new instance of this framework, MTD(ƒ), out-performs SSS* and NegaScout, the Alpha-Beta variant of choice by