The integration of practical search and heuristic knowledge into a competitive go-playing program

Researchers in game playing have developed a class of practical algorithms called alpha-beta pruning to improve the efficiency of search in two-player games. However, these efficient algorithms appear to be inadequate to capt ure all necessary information to play the game of Go at a level above that of an intermediate human player. This is due to the complexity and knowledg e-based requirement of this game. In this paper, search and knowledge are b oth involved in solving one of the resource-demanding non-trivial artificia l intelligence applications. Together, they constitute a basic skeleton of a program that is capable of playing a complete game of Go. This program is designed to reflect on the significance of adding knowledge heuristics in the form of pattern matching and book moves to the search technique offered by the traditional alpha-beta algorithm.