Sequential Minimax Search for a Maximum

Sequential Minimax Search for a Maximum

The problem formulated below was motivated by that of determining an interval containing the point at which a unimodal function on the unit interval possesses a maximum, without postulating regularity conditions involving continuity, derivatives, etc. Our solution is to give, for every e > 0 and every specified number N of values of the argument at which the function may be observed, a procedur...

Sequential Minimax Search for a Zero of a Convex Function

A New Paradigm for Minimax Search

This paper introduces a new paradigm for minimax game-tree search algorithms. MT is a memory-enhanced version of Pearl’s Testprocedure. By changing the way MT is called, a number of best-first game-tree search algorithms can be simply and elegantly constructed (including SSS*). Most of the assessments of minimax search algorithms have been based on simulations. However, these simulations genera...

Best-First Minimax Search

We describe a very simple selective search algorithm for two-player games, called best-first minimax. It always expands next the node at the end of the expected line of play, which determines the minimax value of the root. It uses the same information as alpha-beta minimax, and takes roughly the same time per node generation. We present an implementation of the algorithm that reduces its space ...

Monte Carlo *-Minimax Search

This paper introduces Monte Carlo *-Minimax Search (MCMS), a Monte Carlo search algorithm for turned-based, stochastic, two-player, zero-sum games of perfect information. The algorithm is designed for the class of densely stochastic games; that is, games where one would rarely expect to sample the same successor state multiple times at any particular chance node. Our approach combines sparse sa...