Computer Scientists Solve Checkers

A team of computer scientists and top-level checkers players have "solved" the game of checkers. Using various heuristics, and on an average of 50 computers a day, the team went through 500,000,000,000,000,000,000 different checkers positions, and has now developed a computer which plays "perfect" checkers. It can not lose. If you play perfectly as well, you can play to a draw. The project is called Chinook, and it has been an ongoing project since 1989.

For more information (and to play) see:
http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~chinook/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinook...ghts_player%29

I always hated how simple that game was anyway, Chess is far superior imo.

I agree. Although I don't think it's too far fetched to think that one day Chess may be "solved" as well.

I'd hate to see the code for that.

I'd hate to see the code for that.

I doubt the code is all that complex. My guess is once they work out every position there really doesn't need to be any heuristics, all they need is a shortest path algorithm from the current position to mate.

Shows how much I know about programming. I think I turned in half my work for my Java class a year ago and managed a 'B' somehow.

I doubt the code is all that complex. My guess is once they work out every position there really doesn't need to be any heuristics, all they need is a shortest path algorithm from the current position to mate.

This doesn't work because the program has to change its approach as the player does. If you just have shortest-path then it'd be easy to draw against.