alanback: I'd love to do it and I'm sure it makes sense. But it also makes for a million cups of coffee. Well, maybe not but a 0-ply is instantaneous while 2-ply can take 3 seconds or so per dice roll and 3-ply takes about 7 seconds (both timings longer for a double and perhaps highly spread positions, etc). The rollout at 0-ply took about an hour and a half so I shudder to think what a 2-ply would require, let alone a 3-ply. There is the option of doing just the first N moves at a higher play and then reducing but I haven't tried that. I don't know that it would make that much difference on an opening move rollout. I'll have to try it ...

The writers of Gnu say that 0-ply is adequate as the errors would tend to balance out for the two players and the dice are random beyond the first two rolls anyway and blah, blah, but only the future will tell us how correct they are.

I thought I had heard that computer analysis had ressurected the 2-point opener.
Aye, I'd gained that impression as well and it's been my preferred move for some time now. There's always the possibility of operator error, lol.

Paul Magriel's updating his 70's classic to correct the "mistakes" of that era and also include more about the cube. He's doing it conjunction with some other guy (whose name I can't remember) and they're doing full rollouts on Snowie of all the openings (and maybe all replies?). Hopefully they'll be able to go well beyond 1296 which has far too high an error range for the rolls with subtle differences. I guess it'll be taken as the definitive data for the next wee while..