Thursday, July 19, 2007

First Tic-Tac-Toe... and now Checkers

 Just like I've always believed - Checkers is a worthless game.  Ok, so it's not worthless: I've had many a fun (and at other times very frustrating) game.  But ever since I learned Chess, I've dislike Checkers, primarily because I thought the game was without real strategy; it's not she who plays perfectly wins but rather he who makes a mistake loses.

Come to find out, the computers have solved the game and it really is a game that if each plays perfectly, no one wins.  So just like Tic-Tac-Toe has been solved (see War Games for a cool demonstration) so has Checkers.  But don't attempt to copy down the right moves - "the entire solution includes 500,995,484,682,338,672,639 possible board configurations."

Chess on the other hand is still a long ways from being solved - even if the computers are better than we humans.

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