---
title: "Information Acquisition in Minimal Window Search"
authors:
  - "Alexander Reinefeld"
  - "Jonathan Schaeffer"
  - "T. Anthony Marsland"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1985/210"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1985/0210.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Ninth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 1985
pages: "1040-1042"
track: "Planning and Search"
keywords:
---

# Information Acquisition in Minimal Window Search

Alexander Reinefeld, Jonathan Schaeffer, T. Anthony Marsland

*Proceedings of the Ninth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 1040-1042.

## Abstract

The alpha-beta tree search algorithm can be improved through the use of minimal windows. Branches are searched with a minimal window [a,a+ 1] with the expectancy that this will show the sub-tree to be inferior. If not, then that sub-tree m ust be re-searched. In this paper, several methods are discussed to minimize the cost of the re-search. Two new algorithms, INS and PNS, are introduced and their performance on practical trces is shown tobe comparable to SSS*, but with considerably smaller overhead.