[stevesearer]

I've tried a few games where I do those exact moves with no human judgement and the score ends up quite a bit lower than when I 'generally' follow those moves and consolidate using my best judgement.

Another interesting test was to always play a clockwise or counter-clockwise pattern. The consolidation happens in the middle of the board. This method seemed to result in higher scores than the right/down/right/down pattern.