[computer-go] Re: How to improve my minimax speed?

[Lars Nilsson]

On 11/14/06, Dave Dyer <ddyer at real-me.net> wrote:
> Just as a caveat, keep in mind that alpha-beta is only guaranteed
> to not affect the result if the rest of your search is completely
> deterministic.  While that's a good first order approximation to
> the truth, it's rarely actually true in anything as complex as
> a Go program.

To paraphrase Don Rumsfeld, you alpha-beta prune your tree based on
the evaluations you got, not the evaluations you wish you had. ;)

Lars Nilsson