Skip to main content

A Survey on Minimax Trees And Associated Algorithms

  • Chapter
Minimax and Applications

Part of the book series: Nonconvex Optimization and Its Applications ((NOIA,volume 4))

Abstract

This paper surveys theoretical results about minimax game trees and the algorithms used to explore them. The notion of game tree is formally introduced and its relation with game playing described. The first part of the survey outlines major theoretical results about minimax game trees, their size and the structure of their subtrees. In the second part of this paper, we survey the various sequential algorithms that have been developed to explore minimax trees. The last part of this paper tries to give a succinct view on the state of the art in parallel minimax game tree searching.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Selim G.Akl, David T.Barnard, and Ralph J.Doran Searching game trees in parallel.In Proceedings of the 3rd biennial Conference of the Canadian Society for Computation Studies of Intelligence, pages 224–231, November 1979.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Selim GAkl, David T.Barnard, and Ralph J.Doran.Design, analysis, and implementation of a parallel tree search algorithm. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, PAMI-4(2): 192–203, March 1982.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Kenneth Almquist, Neil McKenzie, and Kenneth Sloan.An inquiry into parallel algorithms for searching game trees.Technical report 88-12-03, University of Washington, Department of Computer Science, Seattle, WA, December 1988.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Ingo Althöfer.On the complexity of searching game trees and other recursion treesJournal of Algorithms, 9: 538–567, 1988.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  5. Ingo Althöfer.A parallel game tree search algorithm with a linear speedupJournal of AlgorithmsAccepted in 1992.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Ingo Althöfer.An incremental negamax algorithmArtificial Intelligence, 43: 57–65, 1990.

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  7. Bruce W.Ballard.The *-minimax search procedure for trees containing chance nodesArtificial Intelligence, 21: 327–350, 1983.

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  8. Gérard M.BaudetThe Design and Analysis of Algorithms for Asynchronous Multiprocessors.PhD thesis, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 1978.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Gérard M.Baudet.On the branching factor of the alpha-beta pruning algorithm.Artificial Intelligence, 10: 173–199, 1978.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  10. Hans Jack Berliner and Carl Eberling.Pattern knowledge and search: The SUPREME architectureArtificial Intelligence, 38 (2): 161–198, 1989.

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  11. Hans Jack Berliner, Gordon Goetsch, Murray SCampbell, and Carl Eberling.Measuring the performance potential of chess programsArtificial Intelligence, 43 (1): 7–21, April 1990.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Max Böhm and Ewald Speckenmeyer.A dynamic processor tree for solving game trees in parallel.In Proceedings of the SOR’89, 1989.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Andrei Z.Broder, Anna R.Karlin, Prabhakar Raghavan, and Eli Upfal.On the parallel complexity of evaluating game-treesTechnical report RR RJ 7729, IBM Research Division, October 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Giovanni Coray and Marc Gengler.A parallel best-first branch-and-bound algorithm and its axiomatization.Parallel Algorithms and Applications, 2: 61–80, 1994.

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  15. Van-Dat Cung and Catherine Roucairol.Parallel minimax tree searching.RR 1549, INRIA, November 1991. In French.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Nevin M.Darwish.A quantitative analysis of the alpha-beta pruning algorithmArtificial Intelligence, 21: 405–433, 1983.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  17. Claude G.Diderich.Evaluation des performances de l’algorithme SSS* avec phases de synchronisation sur une machine parallèle à mémoires distributées.Technical report LITH-99, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Computer Science Theory Laboratory, Lausanne, Switzerland, July 1992. In french.

    Google Scholar 

  18. Claude G.Diderich.A bibliography on minimax trees.Technical report 98, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Computer Science Theory Laboratory, Lausanne, Switzerland, May 1994. Previous versions of this report have been published in the “Bulletin of the EATCS”, No49, February 1993 and in the “ACM SIGACT News”, Vol.24, No.4, December 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Claude G.Diderich and Marc Gengler.An efficient algorithm for solving the token distribution problem on k-ary d-cube networks.In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Parallel Architectures, Algorithms, and Networks (ISPAN’94), December 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Claude G.Diderich and Marc Gengler.Another view of minimax trees.Personal notes, 1994 April.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Edward A.Feigenbaum and Julian Feldman (Eds.)Computers and ThoughtMcGraw Hill, New York, NY, 1963.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  22. Rainer Feldmann, Burkhard Monien, Peter Mysliwietz, and Oliver Vornberger.Distributed game tree searchICC A Journal, 12 (2): 65–73, 1989.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Rainer Feldmann, Burkhard Monien, Peter Mysliwietz, and Oliver Vornberger.Distributed game tree search.In L.N.Kanal V.Kumar, P.S.Gopalakrishnan, editor, Proceedings of Parallel Algorithms for Machine Intelligence and Vision, pages 66–101. Springer-Verlag, 1990.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  24. Rainer Feldmann, Peter Mysliwietz, and Burkhard Monien.A fully distributed chess program.In Proceedings of Advances in Computer Chess 6, pages 1–27 Ellis Horwood, 1990 Editor: D.Beal.

    Google Scholar 

  25. Rainer Feldmann, Peter Mysliwietz, and Burkhard Monien.Studying overheads in massively parallel min/max-tree evaluation (extended abstract)In Proceedings of the ACM Annual Symposium on Parallel Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA’94), 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  26. E.W.Felten and S.W.Otto.Chess on a hypercubeIn G.Fox, editor, Proceedings of the the Third Conference on Hypercube Concurrent Computers and Applications, volume II-Applications, pages 1329–1341, Passadena, CA, 1988.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  27. Raphael A.Finkel and John P.Fishburn.Parallelism in alpha-beta searchArtificial Intelligence, 19: 89–106, 1982.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  28. S.H.Fuller, J.G.Gaschnig, and J.J.GilloglyAn analysis of the alpha-beta pruning algorithmTechnical report, Carnegie-Mellon University, Department of Computer Science, Pittsburgh, July 1973.

    Google Scholar 

  29. Rattikorn Hewett and Krishnamurthy Ganesan.Consistent linear speedup in parallel alphabeta search.In Proceedings of the Computing and Information Conference (ICCI’92), pages 237–240. IEEE Computer Society Press, May 1992.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  30. Feng-Hsiung Hsu, TSAnantharaman, Murray SCampbell, and ANowatzykComputers, Chess, and Cognition, chapter 5 - Deep Thought, pages 55–78 Springer-Verlag, 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  31. Toshihide Ibaraki.Generalization of alpha-beta and SSS* search proceduresArtificial Intelligence, 29: 73–117, 1986.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  32. Hermann Kaindl, Reza Shams, and Helmut Horacek.Minimax search algorithms with and without aspiration windows.IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, PAMI-13(12): 1225–1235, December 1991.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Richard MKarp and Yanjun Zhang.On parallel evaluation of game trees.In Proceedings of the ACM Annual Symposium on Parallel Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA’89), pages 409–420, New York, NY, 1989. ACM Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  34. Donald E.Knuth and Ronald W.Moore.An analysis of alpha-beta pruningArtificial Intelligence, 6 (4): 293–326, 1975.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  35. Richard E.Korf.Iterative deepening: An optimal admissible tree searchArtificial Intelligence, 27: 97–109, 1985.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  36. David Levy and Monty NewbornHow Computers Play ChessComputer Science Press, Oxford, England, 1991.

    Google Scholar 

  37. T.Anthony Marsland and Murray S.Campbell.Parallel search of strongly ordered game treesACM Computing Survey, 14 (4): 533–551, December 1982.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. T.Anthony Marsland and Fred Popowich.Parallel game-tree searchIEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, PAMI-7(4): 442–452, July 1985.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. T.Anthony Marsland, Alexander Reinefeld, and Jonathan SchaefferLow overhead alternatives to SSS*Artificial Intelligence, 31: 185–199, 1987.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. David Allen McAllester.Conspiracy numbers for min-max searchingArtificial Intelligence, 35: 287–310, 1988.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  41. Gerard PMichonRecursive Random Games: A Probabilistic Model for Perfect Information GamesPhD thesis, University of California at Los Angeles, Computer Science Department, Los Angeles, CA, 1983.

    Google Scholar 

  42. L.G.Mitten.Branch and bound methods: General formulation and propertiesOperations Research, 18: 24–34, 1970.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  43. Judea Pearl.Asymptotical properties of minimax trees and game searching procedures.Artificial Intelligence, 14 (2): 113–138, 1980.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  44. Judea PearlHeuristics - Intelligent Search Strategies for Computer Problem SolvingAddison-Wesley Publishing Co., Reading, MA, 1984.

    Google Scholar 

  45. Wim Pijls and Arie de Bruin.Another view of the SSS* algorithm.In Proceedings of the International Symposium (SIGAL’90), Tokyo, Japan, August 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  46. Wim Pijls and Arie de Bruin.Searching informed game trees.In Proceedings of Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC ’92), LNCS 650, pages 332–341, 1992.

    Google Scholar 

  47. Ronald L.Rivest.Game tree searching by min/max approximationArtificial Intelligence, 34 (l): 77–96, 1987.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  48. Igor Roizen and Judea Pearl.A minimax algorithm better than alpha-beta? Yes and NoArtificial Intelligence, 21: 199–230, 1983.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  49. Jonathan Schaeffer.The history heuristicICCA Journal, 6 (3): 16–19, 1983.

    Google Scholar 

  50. Jonathan Schaeffer.Distributed game-tree searching.Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, 6: 90–114, 1989.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  51. Jonathan Schaeffer.Conspiracy numbers.Artificial Intelligence, 43: 67–84, 1990.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  52. James H.Slagle and John K.Dixon.Experiments with some programs that search game treesJournal of the ACM, 16 (2): 189–207, April 1969.

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  53. Igor R.Steinberg and Marvin Solomon.Searching game trees in parallel.In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Parallel Processing, pages III-9-III-17, 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  54. G.C.StockmanA Problem-Reduction Approach to the Linguistic Analysis of WaveformsPhD thesis, University of Maryland, May 1977. Published as computer science technical report TR-538.

    Google Scholar 

  55. G.C.Stockman.A minimax algorithm better than alpha-beta? Artificial Intelligence, 12 (2): 179–196, 1979.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 1995 Kluwer Academic Publishers

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Diderich, C.G., Gengler, M. (1995). A Survey on Minimax Trees And Associated Algorithms. In: Du, DZ., Pardalos, P.M. (eds) Minimax and Applications. Nonconvex Optimization and Its Applications, vol 4. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3557-3_2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3557-3_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-3559-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-3557-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics