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Exhaustive searcher Print E-mail
By Joel Benjamin   
July 28, 2006
Approximately every 10 or 12 moves, I do a thorough search of all legal moves, by all my pieces in order to identify all candidate plans. But, this approach takes an inordinate amount of time, and I cannot perform this search on every move and still meet time control (G120). How often do you perform an exhaustive search of all legal moves in your games?

Akagi Kayashima-1524
Exhaustive searcher
Almost never. I suppose I might search all legal moves if I thought I was close to a stalemate, but that's about it. Computers analyze all legal moves because they can. Since time is not an issue, it works better to approach the game this way. Humans are much too slow to find moves by that method, but we are good at weeding out irrelevant options. I like that you start your search by identifying "candidate" moves, but including every move as a candidate is too wasteful and unnecessary. Streamlining your search allows you more time to make a quality search. A move is a true candidate because something about it seems logical or purposeful. I'm all for "planning" as well, but I don't see how you plan better by looking at every legal move.

Joel Benjamin
 
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