From 1af43cf92b7fee8273d30d63d4218330cdbc87de Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: =?UTF-8?q?Jo=C3=A3o=20Pedro=20Neto?=
 <886455+jpneto@users.noreply.github.com>
Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2026 08:58:14 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] Update pollux.ts

---
 src/games/pollux.ts | 30 ++++++++++++++----------------
 1 file changed, 14 insertions(+), 16 deletions(-)

diff --git a/src/games/pollux.ts b/src/games/pollux.ts
index 235291f6..0f72c1fa 100644
--- a/src/games/pollux.ts
+++ b/src/games/pollux.ts
@@ -204,26 +204,24 @@ export class PolluxGame extends GameBase {
             const empties = (this.graph.listCells() as string[]).filter(c => !this.board.has(c));
 
             ///// hack: to work with AP's playground (since flags no-moves and automove are incompatible)
-            // this is the computational heaviest ply of the game
-            if (! safe ) {
-                const ply2moves: string[] = [];
-                this.shuffle(empties);
-                for (const cell of empties) {
-                    if ( this.nNeighbors(cell).length === 0 ) {
-                        for (const cell1 of empties) {
-                            if ( cell === cell1 ) { continue; }
-                            if ( this.nNeighbors(cell1).length === 0 &&
-                                !this.graph.neighbours(cell).includes(cell1) ) {
-                                ply2moves.push(`${cell},${cell1}`);
-                            }
+            // this is the computational heaviest ply of the game, computing all possible moves is unfeasible
+            this.shuffle(empties);
+            for (const cell of empties) {
+                if ( this.nNeighbors(cell).length === 0 ) {
+                    for (const cell1 of empties) {
+                        if ( cell === cell1 ) { continue; }
+                        if ( this.nNeighbors(cell1).length === 0 &&
+                            !this.graph.neighbours(cell).includes(cell1) ) {
+                            moves.push(`${cell},${cell1}`);
                         }
                     }
-                    if (ply2moves.length === 2) { return ply2moves; }
                 }
+                if (moves.length > 2) { break; }
             }
             //// end hack
 
-            for (const cell of empties) {
+            /* validateMove does not need this computation, which is too costly: O(n^4)
+              for (const cell of empties) {
                 if ( this.nNeighbors(cell).length === 0 ) {
                     for (const cell1 of empties) {
                         if ( cell === cell1 ) { continue; }
@@ -233,7 +231,7 @@ export class PolluxGame extends GameBase {
                         }
                     }
                 }
-            }
+            }*/
         }
 
         if ( this.stack.length === 4 ) {
@@ -269,7 +267,7 @@ export class PolluxGame extends GameBase {
                 }
             }
         }
-        
+
         if (! safe ) { // shows a sample of moves (just for the frontend, the code will keep `safe` as true)
             this.shuffle(moves);
             return moves.slice(0, 50); // output a random (smallish) selection of moves