Game neeeeews.

[prog]

Checkers has been solved. It's the most complex game so far whose single perfect single strategy has been discovered.

What's more, you can play online against a bot that's running this algorithm, and you are guaranteed to never win. Even if you play as perfectly as it does, the best you can do is force a draw.

I love this stuff. (And who'd like to write the Volity bot version...?)

Comments

[mrmorse.livejournal.com]

That story is amazing on multiple levels. I'm blown away by the fact that Marion Tinsley, the human world checkers champion, only lost seven matches between 1950 and his death in 1994.

From the article, it's not clear if the algorithm can be easily ported to other platforms, nor the required processing power to play at a reasonable speed.

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

Doesn't matter! We set up the bot to rely on the professor's web site!

Yes, it's a Mechanical Turk inside which is concealed *an actual mechanical Turk.* Or, I should say, a mechanical Canadian.

[queue.livejournal.com]

I saw Schaeffer talk at the 50th anniversary of the Dartmouth Conference. He's a cool guy doing lots of cool stuff, and he mentioned that checkers was "almost solved". Check out his website for some of his other projects.

And how disturbing is it that Chinook has killed a human being?