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by gjm11 1200 days ago
24x is more than 1 ply. Typical branching factor isn't so far from 24, and with alpha-beta the effective branching factor is more like sqrt(nominal branching factor), and I think modern engines are pretty good at pruning and extending the tree to make the scaling even better than that.
1 comments

Is a "ply" a unit I'm not familiar with? Or does it just refer to a single layer. (Honestly not sure and curious)
A ply is half a move. Or to put it another way, one move is one ply by white and one ply by black. This is a term that is common to all sequential games.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ply_(game_theory)