QM,
I considered this. Every game I have ever played, my starting move has always been where I can get the biggest chain reaction or set a chain reaction. In other words, it may make sense to create algorithms that mimic real strategies to play the games rather than exhaustively brute forcing all possible ways to play the board.

I just can't find anything I am happy with and I knew that the amazing monks at the Monastery would point out something obvious (probably having to do with recursion) that I completely missed.