Just wanted to let you know that I'm still working on my homebrew. I've got a version that takes at most half a minute to play and is a challenge to beat, a vast improvement over the 3.5 minutes the last version took.I spent some time during the holidays working on alpha-beta pruning and got it working. This pruning allows the computer to recognize moves that will not be of any benefit and saves searching time. Also I've been able to put in a more intelligent heuristic. There is still work to do though. I am aware of some weaknesses in the A.I., and want to work on strengthening the heuristic.