Week 7 — Game Playing

Two players, perfect information, one optimal strategy — the backup rule behind every board game AI. Asked in every exam paper

  1. Minimax — Game Tree Search

    Two players, perfect information, one optimal strategy — the backup rule behind every board game AI. Asked in every exam paper

  2. Alpha-Beta Pruning

    Minimax's answer without reading every leaf — prune branches that provably can't matter. Asked in every exam paper

  3. Game Strategies and the Best Strategy

    What a 'strategy' really means in a game tree — and how to list the horizon nodes that make up MAX's optimal plan

  4. Alpha-Beta Optimal Leaf Assignment

    The inverted exam question — assign values to leaves to MAXIMIZE pruning. Master the α/β window trick behind 2026 papers

  5. Forcing the Minimax Value — One-Leaf Tweaks

    Change ONE horizon eval to force the root to a target value — the inverse problem from 23T1 papers, solved with backup arithmetic

  6. Game Evaluation Functions

    When the game tree is too big to search to the end — cut off at k-ply, score the board statically, and back up as if it were terminal