Look-Ahead and One-Person Games

A preliminary investigation of the role of look-ahead in one-person games is presented. The use of look-ahead in comparing the effectiveness of different heuristic functions is discussed. There is a survey of recent work in tree-searching including that of Michie and Doran (1966), Hart, Nilsson, and Raphael (1968), and Pohl (1969, 1970). Based on some of Pohl's results, two theorems are proven in section 2 which suggest a possible use for look-ahead. Some experimental results are presented in section 3 which satisfy to a limited degree the aforementioned theorems and some additional observations are made. In conclusion, an attempt is presented to relate look-ahead to the notion of 'informedness' introduced by Hart, Nilsson, and Raphael. Finally, some further directions for research are suggested.