Thanks so much for your nice comment.
The AI definitely made me think of giving up a few times. 😅
I tried to make it run in parallel while the player made their move, but couldn't get it to run smoothly, so I had to live with the long waiting times. At least it does get better the further you are into a match, as there are less and less options for the AI to consider.
But this is an area I absolutely want to polish some more (after some time off).