Combinatorial game theory | Trees (graph theory)
Game tree
In the context of Combinatorial game theory, which typically studies sequential games with perfect information, a game tree is a graph representing all possible game states within such a game. Such games include well-known ones such as chess, checkers, Go, and tic-tac-toe. This can be used to measure the complexity of a game, as it represents all the possible ways a game can pan out. Due to the large game trees of complex games such as chess, algorithms that are designed to play this class of games will use partial game trees, which makes computation feasible on modern computers. Various methods exist to solve game trees. If a complete game tree can be generated, a deterministic algorithm, such as backward induction or retrograde analysis can be used. Randomized algorithms and minimax algorithms such as MCTS can be used in cases where a complete game tree is not feasible. (Wikipedia).
