ABSTRACT
Interest search is another way to look at minimax pruning and allows the search to concentrate on meaningful variations. This method radically impacted the fortunes of the shogi program Shotest, which twice ranked #3 in the Computer Shogi Association (CSA) world championships in Japan, making it the all-time highest ranked western shogi program ever. Even basic implementations of this method yield a 5× speedup for chess, with no net loss of strength. For shogi this yield was 14×. This chapter details this method and how it was used for chess and shogi.
