Maven (Scrabble) on Scrabble. The problem with Alpha Beta is that some Scrabble endgames require 14 moves to play out, and it is not possible to search that deeply. This is not merely a theoretical possibility. When one player is "stuck" with a tile, then playing out all remaining tiles is impossible. In that situation the optimal strategy for both sides is usually to play one tile on each turn. Maven uses a different approach. The B* search algorithm is a selective-depth, progressive-widening algorithm that guarantees to find optimal solutions to two-player games when one can compute upper and lower bounds on
Tile-matching video game game mechanic, rather than a distinct genre of games. The mechanism of matching game pieces to make them disappear is a feature of many non-digital games, including Mahjong solitaire and Solitaire card games. Jesper Juul traces the history of tile-matching video games back to "Tetris" and "Chain Shot!", published in 1984 and 1985. While both focus on pattern matching, they differ in important design points such as time pressure, tile manipulation and match criteria. A second generation of influential matching games – "Puzznic", "Columns", "Dr. Mario" and "Plotting" – was published in 1989 and 1990. Games building on "Dr. Mario"'s