Connect5 Strategy
Steven Radack

General Searching Algorithm

If the board is empty, choose the middle square.  Otherwise, because of
time constraints, it looks at all places to go where a space next to it
is occupied, instead of every empty space.  It then returns the move
that has the highest evaluative value based on the static board
evaluation function.  Note that it does no further searching than just
the one level.

Static Board Evaluation

The evaluator has a set of patterns that it looks at, counting them and
determining a value based on how many patterns there are.  Certainly
some patterns have more value than others.  Furthermore, a pattern is
only important sometimes if there is more than one of it.  The
evaluator returns a value between -1.0 and +1.0 based on how many
patterns it counted and the respective value of those patterns in the
game.