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
Scrabble letter distributions are included here as they are sometimes used in borrowed words. Blanks do not exist in this game. German-language editions of Scrabble contain 102 letter tiles, in the following distribution: Before the current 102-tile set, German language sets had 119 tiles. With the larger sized tile pool, players had eight tiles at a time on their racks, as opposed to the standard seven. The letter distribution for this larger set is: German sets marketed as Foreign Language Editions produced by Selchow and Righter had 100 tiles with the following distribution: Before the Foreign Language Editions produced by Selchow and Righter