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Subject: Re: Minimal alpha-beta tree

Author: Dan Honeycutt

Date: 17:17:16 03/31/04

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On March 31, 2004 at 20:04:20, Mike Siler wrote:

>If I recall correctly, Knuth and Moore showed that the minimum number of leaf
>nodes the standard alpha-beta algorithm will examine when searching to depth d
>given a fixed branching factor of w is
>
>w^Floor(d/2) + w^Ceiling(d/2) + 1
>
>However, in the paper "Multi-Cut Alpha Beta Pruning in Game Tree Search" which
>can be found at http://digilander.libero.it/gargamellachess/papers.htm under
>Pruning, there is a diagram of a minimal game tree with fixed branching factor
>of 3 and fixed depth of 3 plies. In the diagram, a total of 11 leaf nodes are
>examined. When I plugged in some values for the leaf nodes and traced through
>the algorithm, I got the same number. But if you use the formula above, you get:
>
>3^Floor(3/2) + 3^Ceiling(3/2) + 1 = 3^1 + 3^2 + 1 = 13
>
>Why the discrepancy? Also, does anyone know how this formula was found/proven or
>where I can find this?
>
>Michael

is not the formula:
w^Floor(d/2) + w^Ceiling(d/2) - 1

Dan H.



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