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Is this Duplicate Scrabble (all contestants playing the same letters)? If so, I imagine computers reached perfect play long ago, as it seems to involve nothing
by apricot 6y ago
Is this Duplicate Scrabble (all contestants playing the same letters)? If so, I imagine computers reached perfect play long ago, as it seems to involve nothing beyond memorizing huge lists of numbers and searching the board for the best place to put them.
But what about regular Scrabble? Sometimes, the best play is not the word that's worth the most points, because it might give your opponent a chance to make a big play (the simplest example is refraining to play a high-value word that opens a triple score square for your opponent). The best play depends on the probabilities of your opponent holding, now or in the future, certain letters, and you can make a probabilistic model of that based on the letters that are in play at any moment. Perfect play seems to involve a lot of computation. What's the state of the art on this?