  The currently most efficient algorithm for inference with a probabilistic
network builds upon a triangulation of a network's graph. In this paper, we
show that pre-processing can help in finding good triangulations
forprobabilistic networks, that is, triangulations with a minimal maximum
clique size. We provide a set of rules for stepwise reducing a graph, without
losing optimality. This reduction allows us to solve the triangulation problem
on a smaller graph. From the smaller graph's triangulation, a triangulation of
the original graph is obtained by reversing the reduction steps. Our
experimental results show that the graphs of some well-known real-life
probabilistic networks can be triangulated optimally just by preprocessing; for
other networks, huge reductions in their graph's size are obtained.
