I'm developing a minmax algorithm with alpha beta pruning.
Now I'm looking for some good (local) strategies to make the AI smarter in order to increase the pruned nodes from alpha beta.

I can think of a few moves, such as checking to make sure the opposite player doesn't win and preventing forking, also winning and creating your own forks. So any local strategies that I can perform by analyzing the board before recursively iterating is what I'm after.

Anyone know of any good strategies or resources that discuss these?