This game comes to us from Patron Ben M., who played a really interesting endgame recently!
For Scrabble engine users out there:
The prior standard engine, Quackle, runs into issues in the endgame when the optimal sequences have very high depth. The newer engine Macondo has made a huge step forward in this area and is capable of solving any endgame, no matter the depth.
However, in situations like this, entering the correct command is key!
Here's what happens in Ben's game when you ask Macondo to run its normal pre-endgame solver:
Here is what happens when you use the command
peg -only-solve "B13 AJI" -endgameplies 25
instead:
By asking Macondo to solve each potential endgame using 25 plies (aka turns), it will correctly identify extremely long sequences that the default command will not. As you can see, the candidate choice of AJI is initially shown to win 100% of games, but with greater depth, it wins 5/8 endgames, which confirms Ben's intuition!