Checkers is a fairly simple game (meaning simple rules) that many kids enjoy. All pieces are the same, and Whoa, you can keep killing the opponent's pieces by repeating jumping. If a foolish move is made, your opponent can wipe out a lot of your pieces in 1 move. I don't like it as much as chess because there is not as much strategy involved.
This seemingly simple game turns out to be a very difficult program that sparkled big research, and now the perfect checker program that cannot be beaten is written. See here for details.
Though Deep Blue beat the top human player, according to the article, chess is much more difficult than checker and require a lot more research to solve.
Ok, big the point is: why bother solving these games? Someone has to pay years to fund this type of research.
I hope this problem does have some practical use for that money to be well spent.
This reflects human curiosity: the if-there-is-a-problem-i-am-going-solve-it attitude. I wrote a little Sudoku program to solve the popular puzzle too.
This also is the fame factor, which explains why people do strange things to get on the Guiness book of records. Perhaps the CNN article justified all that years of programming work. Ok, my Sudoku program is not going to win any fame (a mere trial-and-error approach)
Ok, I've got a suggestion: have the perfect checker program play another instance (copy) of it. Fun to see how programs try to outsmart each other? Sometimes I have computer chess play against each other.
Which program will win? Draw all the time isn't so fun anymore? (like tic-tac-toe)
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