The first-move advantage in board games
Huang Chen · Caai Transactions on Intelligent Systems · 2007
The importance of the first-move advantage in rules of board and ball games is presented in this article. Consideration of the first-move advantage in Connect-Five lead to the invention of a new board game, Connect-Six. The value of the first-move advantage can be calculated after studying the even-odd effect in computer gaming programs. Since the first-move advantage can be evaluated, the principle of null-move pruning is identical to other pruning algorithms based on an Alpha-Beta window. This is the reason the functions of other pruning algorithms are concealed by null-move pruning in chess programs.