Re: FYI & my annoyment

[Compgo123@xxxxxxx]

It's an interesting problem to study 3x3, etc ... board. Too bad my program 
is not convenient to change to 3x3 board. Anyway I think the reason why it 
take so long is the depth of the search. If without any pruning and ends with 
two consecutive passes, the depth of a 3x3 board could probably reach 30 if 
not more. My experience is that for brute force or neo-brute force, and a 
depth of 15 is probably all we can hope for for a 10 possible inital moves 
(9+pass). Anything deeper will require unrealisticaly long computation time. 
However, if the optimum sequence is less than 15 moves, one can set the 
maximum search depth at 15 ply. 

Dan Liu