Embodiments achieve favorable performance-complexity trade-offs in MIMO detection for three or more channel inputs. Some embodiments describe systems and methods comprising a leaf node predictor for receiving a processed communications stream, determining at least one channel metric corresponding to the communications stream for a given channel realization, and generating at least three instructions to output, which at least one instruction corresponds to at least one predicted best leaf node candidate for the given channel realization. Further embodiments alternatively describe systems and methods which enumerate N1 best values of a first symbol, enumerate N2(i) best values of a second symbol for an i-th best value of the first symbol, enumerate N3(i, j) best values of a third symbol for an i-th best value of the first symbol and j-th best value of the second symbol, combine enumerated best values of each symbol into a leaf-node value, and compute the cost of each leaf-node value enumerated.