Hey, I am trying to write a simple AI for a "Get four" game. The basic game principles are done, so I can throw in coins of different color, and they stack on each other and fill a 2D Array and so on and so forth. until now this is what the method looks like:

public int insert(int x, int color)  //0 = empty, 1=player1 2=player2"

X is the horizontal coordinate, as the y coordinate is determined by how many stones are in the array already, I think the idea is obvious.

Now the problem is I have to rate specific game situations, so find how many new pairs, triplets and possible 4 in a row I can get in a specific situation to then give each situation a specific value. With these values I can setup a "Game tree" to then decide which move would be best next (later on implementing Alpha-Beta-Pruning). My current problem is that I can't think of an efficient way to implement a rating of the current game situation in a java method. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated! greetings from Germany Mr. Pink