World-championship-caliber Scrabble

Computer Scrabble programs have achieved a level of performance that exceeds that of the strongest human players. MAVEN was the first program to demonstrate this against human opposition. Scrabble is a game of imperfect information with a large branching factor. The techniques successfully applied in two-player games such as chess do not work here. MAVEN combines a selective move generator, simulations of likely game scenarios, and the B* algorithm to produce a world-championship-caliber Scrabble-playing program. (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.