Re:Checkers has been solved - NO! (Score 1)

No, checkers is not a solved game. I was pleased to see that there were some more accurate postings on this particular topic, but felt it my duty to clear up any misunderstandings. As mentioned in another posting, Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer, a professor at the University of Alberta, brought us the Chinook checkers program. Research on Chinook has been more-or-less inactive for the past few years, after it won the world man-machine checkers championship. The human competitor was the now-deceased Dr. Marion Tinsley, an outstanding individual in the game of checkers. There are a dearth of interesting anecdotes surrounding both the championship (match was conceded by Tinsley, who was not in excellent health at the time), and the prior development on the Chinook project. These stories are chronicled in Schaeffer's book, "One Jump Ahead". More information is also at the projects web page

To say that a game is solved, one is asserting that either through a theoretical proof or complete experimental evidence, it has been proven that a game is either a win, a loss, or a draw for the first player. This, of course, assumes that each player plays a perfect game without any mistakes. If a mistake is made, the other player should be able to conclude their game with perfect play to guarantee a better result in their favour. To this day, no-one has solved checkers, but it is possible that we are approaching the day that it becomes solved. In fact, a certain computing science professor may be looking for graduate students interested in furthering the research in this area. If you are interested at all in this area, I urge you to check out the aforementioned book and website.

Disclaimer:

I do not study game theory myself, but am a current graduate student under Dr. Schaeffer.