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Brian Sheppard,
an American mathematician, computer scientist and computer games programmer, including the games of chess, Othello, and most notably Scrabble, where he is author of the commercial program Maven ^[1]. Maven applies various search algorithms for various game stages, a probability-weighted search, Monte-Carlo Tree Search and B* for the endgame analysis. Brian Sheppard holds a BA in mathematics from Harvard University in 1984, and a Ph.D. from Maastricht University under supervision of Jaap van den Herik and Jonathan Schaeffer in 2002 ^[2]. His Ph.D. thesis Towards Perfect Play of Scrabble received the ChessBase Best-Publication Award.

Selected Publications

• Brian Sheppard (2002). Towards Perfect Play of Scrabble. Ph.D. thesis, Maastricht University, pdf, Stellingen pdf
• Brian Sheppard (2002). World-championship-caliber Scrabble. Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 134, No. 1-2, CiteSeerX
• Brian Sheppard (2002). An Overview of Computer Play of Scrabble. Invited Lecture, 7th Computer Olympiad Workshop
• Brian Sheppard (2003). Endgame Play in Scrabble. ICGA Journal, Vol. 26, No. 3
• Brian Sheppard (2004). Efficient Control of Selective Simulations. CG 2004
• Brian Sheppard (2004). Efficient Control of Selective Simulations. ICGA Journal, Vol. 27, No. 2 ^[3]

Forum Posts

• Re: MVV/LVA vs SEE move ordering - more test results by Brian Sheppard, rgcc, August 27, 1995
• Re: Horizon Effects in modern chess programs? by Brian Sheppard, rgcc, September 10, 1995
• Re: Unusual killer heuristic behavior by Brian Sheppard, rgcc, September 13, 1995
• Re: Deep Blue's forehand by Brian Sheppard, rgcm, February 26, 1996

External Links

• Brian Sheppard | LinkedIn
• Brian Sheppard talks about Maven

References

1. ^ Brian Sheppard talks about Maven
2. ^ Brian Sheppard (2002). Towards Perfect Play of Scrabble. Ph.D. thesis, Maastricht University, pdf
3. ^ slightly revised version of the CG 2004 paper

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