Checkers

also American Checkers or [|English draughts], is a variant of Draughts played on an eight by eight board using 32 either dark or light squares. Like Chess, Checkers is a [|two-player] [|zero-sum] and [|perfect information] [|abstract strategy] [|board game].
 * Home * Games * Checkers**
 * [[image:Checkersboard.jpg width="292" height="264" link="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_draughts"]] ||~  || **Checkers**,

Each side starts with twelve checkers, placed on the three back-ranks. Black moves first, alternating with White - there is no passing move. Checkers move one step diagonally forward, kings diagonally forward and backward. When a checker reaches the last rank, it promotes to a king. Checkers and king capture men by jumping over them to an empty square behind (checkers only forward). Captures are compulsory, one must play a capture if at least one is available, and is required to continue jumping and capturing as part of the same turn. However, a checker reaching the last row must stop to be crowned and can move no further on that turn. The side run out of moves loses.

toc =Computer Olympiads=
 * Checkers board ||~  ||^   ||
 * Checkers board ||~  ||^   ||
 * 1st Computer Olympiad, London 1989
 * 2nd Computer Olympiad, London 1990

=Solving Checkers= In 2007, the [|Chinook] team around Jonathan Schaeffer declared Checkers [|solved].

=Programs= The first Checkers program was written by Christopher Strachey, [|National Research Development Corporation], [|London], in the early 1950s to run on a [|Pilot ACE] at the [|National Physical Laboratory], exhausting its memory, and soon ported to  the Ferranti Mark 1. His checkers program from 1966 written in [|CPL] is available on-line, in a corrected version with courtesy of Peter Norvig. The second program was written in 1956 by Arthur Samuel :

American checkers

 * [|Cake] by Martin Fierz
 * [|Checker!] by Gil Dodgen
 * [|Checker Hustler] by Derek Oldbury
 * [|Checkermate] by Derek Oldbury and Adrian Millett
 * [|Checkers] from AI Factory
 * [|Chinook] by Jonathan Schaeffer et al.
 * [|Colossus Draughts] by Martin Bryant
 * [|The Duke program] by Eric Jensen, Tom Truscott and Alan Biermann
 * [|KingsRow] by Ed Gilbert
 * [|Nemesis] by Murray Cash
 * [|Sage Draughts] by Adrian Millett
 * [|Tournament Checkers] by [|David Butler]
 * [|Wyllie] by Roberto Waldteufel

Classical checkers

 * Profound by Alvaro Cardoso
 * [|Windamas] by Jean-Bernard Alemanni

=Selected Publications=

1952 ...

 * Christopher Strachey (**1952**). //[|Logical or non-mathematical Programs]//. Proceedings of the ACM Conference, Toronto, reprinted in David Levy (ed.) (**1988**). //[|Computer Games I]//.
 * Arthur Samuel (**1959**). //[|Some Studies in Machine Learning Using the Game of Checkers]//. IBM Journal July 1959, reprinted in David Levy (ed.) (**1988**). //[|Computer Games I]//.

1960 ...

 * Arnold K. Griffith (**1966**). //[|A new Machine-Learning Technique applied to the Game of Checkers]//. MIT, [|Project MAC], MAC-M-293
 * Christopher Strachey (**1966**). //[|System Analysis and Programming]//. Scientific American, September 1966, re-published August 23, 2011
 * Arthur Samuel (**1967**). //Some Studies in Machine Learning. Using the Game of Checkers. II-Recent Progress//. [|pdf]

1970 ...

 * Arnold K. Griffith (**1974**). //[|A Comparison and Evaluation of Three Machine Learning Procedures as Applied to the Game of Checkers]//. [|Artificial Intelligence], Vol. 5, No. 2
 * Aviezri Fraenkel, Michael R. Garey, David S. Johnson, Thomas J. Schaefer, Yaacov Yesha (**1978**). //The Complexity of Checkers on an N * N Board//. [|FOCS 1978]
 * Tom Truscott (**1978**). //Computer-Checkers//. Personal Computing, Vol. 2, No. 9, pp. 86
 * Editor (**1979**). //Computer Checkers//. Personal Computing, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 73
 * Editor (**1979**). //Computer Checkers//. Personal Computing, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 70
 * Editor (**1979**). //Computer Checkers - A Checkers Program//. Personal Computing, Vol. 3, No. 5, pp. 60
 * Editor (**1979**). //Computer Checkers - The Tinsely Challange//. Personal Computing, Vol. 3, No. 7, pp. 88

1980 ...

 * Editor (**1980**). //A Checkers Debate//. Personal Computing, Vol. 4, No. 5, pp. 83 » Martin Gardner

1990 ...
> Jonathan Schaeffer, Norman Treloar, Paul Lu, Rob Lake (**1993**). //Man Versus Machine for the World Checkers Championship//. ICCA Journal, Vol. 16, No. 2
 * Jonathan Schaeffer (**1991**). //Checkers, a Preview of what will Happen in Chess?// ICCA Journal, Vol. 14, No. 2
 * Jonathan Schaeffer, Joe Culberson, Norman Treloar, Brent Knight, Paul Lu, Duane Szafron (**1991**). //Checkers Program to Challenge for World Championship//. SIGART Bulletin, Vol. 2, No. 2
 * Jonathan Schaeffer, Joe Culberson, Norman Treloar, Brent Knight, Paul Lu, Duane Szafron (**1991**). //Reviving the Game of Checkers//. Heuristic Programming in AI 2
 * Jonathan Schaeffer, Norman Treloar, Paul Lu, Rob Lake (**1993**). //[|Man Versus Machine for the World Checkers Championship]//. [|AI Magazine], Vol. 14, No. 2 » WCCC 1992 - Workshop

1995 ...

 * Jonathan Schaeffer, Rob Lake (**1996**). //Solving the Game of Checkers//. [|Games of No Chance] edited by Richard J. Nowakowski, [|pdf]
 * J. Ignacio Giráldez, Daniel Borrajo (**1998**). //[|Distributed Decision Making in Checkers]//. CG 1998
 * Kumar Chellapilla, David B. Fogel (**1999**). //[|Evolving Neural Networks to Play Checkers without Expert Knowledge]//. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, Vol. 10, No. 6, pp. 1382-1391.

2000 ...

 * Kumar Chellapilla, David B. Fogel (**2001**). //[|Evolving an Expert Checkers Playing Program without Using Human Expertise]//. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, Vol. 5, No. 4, pp.422-428
 * Jonathan Schaeffer (**2001**). //[|Technology Transfer from One High-Performance Search Engine to Another]//. ICGA Journal, Vol. 24, No. 3
 * David B. Fogel (**2002**). //Blondie24: Playing at the Edge of AI//. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc., San Francisco, CA. ISBN 1-55860-783-8, [|amazon.com]
 * Jonathan Schaeffer, Yngvi Björnsson, Neil Burch, Rob Lake, Paul Lu, Steve Sutphen (**2003**). //Building the Checkers 10-Piece Endgame Databases.// Advances in Computer Games 10. [|pdf] » Endgame Tablebases
 * Ed Trice, Gil Dodgen (**2003**). //[|The Perfect 7-Piece Checkers Database]//. ICGA Journal, Vol. 26, No. 4 » Endgame Tablebases

2005 ...

 * Jonathan Schaeffer, Yngvi Björnsson, Neil Burch, Akihiro Kishimoto, Martin Müller, Rob Lake, Paul Lu, Steve Sutphen (**2005**). //Solving Checkers//. IJCAI 2005
 * Jonathan Schaeffer, Neil Burch, Yngvi Björnsson, Akihiro Kishimoto, Martin Müller, Rob Lake, Paul Lu, Steve Sutphen (**2007**). //[|Checkers is Solved]//. [|Science], Vol. 317, no. 5844
 * [|Magdalena Kusiak], [|Karol Walędzik], Jacek Mańdziuk (**2007**). //Evolutionary Approach to the Game of Checkers//. [|8. ICANNGA], [|pdf]
 * Jonathan Schaeffer (**1997, 2009**). //[|One Jump Ahead] Challenging Human Supremacy in Checkers//. Springer, ISBN 0-387-94930-5, ISBN 978-0-387-76575-4
 * [|Belal Al-Khateeb], Graham Kendall (**2009**). //Introducing a round robin tournament into Blondie24//. [|CIG 2009]

2010 ...

 * [|Karol Walędzik], Jacek Mańdziuk (**2010**). //The Layered Learning method and its Application to Generation of Evaluation Functions for the Game of Checkers//. [|11. PPSN], [|pdf]
 * João Guerra (**2011**). //Classical Checkers//. Masters thesis, [|Technical University of Lisbon], [|pdf]
 * Aart Bik (**2012**). //Computing Deep Perft and Divide Numbers for Checkers//. ICGA Journal, Vol. 35, No. 4 » Perft
 * [|Belal Al-Khateeb], Graham Kendall (**2012**). //Effect of Look-Ahead Depth in Evolutionary Checkers//. [|Journal of Computer Science and Technology, Vol. 27], No. 5
 * Danilo Carvalho, Minh Le Nguyen, Hiroyuki Iida (**2017**). //An Analysis of Majority Voting in Homogeneous Groups for Checkers: Understanding Group Performance through Unbalance//. Advances in Computer Games 15, [|ResearchGate]

=Forum Posts=

1990 ...

 * [|A taste of things to come?] by Jonathan Schaeffer, rgc, September 01, 1990
 * [|Checkers match] by Murray Campbell, rgc, August 20, 1992
 * [|Man vs. Machine World Checkers Championship (day 5)] by Robert Lake, rgc, August 21, 1992
 * [|Tinsley vs. Chinook?] by Robert Williams, rgc, August 16, 1994
 * [|Silicon Graphics World Checkers Championship] by Robert Lake, rgc, August 16, 1994
 * [|Silicon Graphics World Checkers Championship - day 3] by Jonathan Schaeffer, rgc, August 18, 1994
 * [|Checkers Championship - additional information] by Jonathan Schaeffer, rgc, August 20, 1994
 * [|PDN - Portable Draughts Notation] by Pc Sol, rgc, July 22, 1995

2000 ...

 * [|perft for 8x8 checkers] by Aart Bik, CCC, May 08, 2009 » Perft

2010 ...

 * [|WinBoard, exotic version] by Harm Geert Muller, CCC, January 15, 2011 » WinBoard
 * [|UCT surprise for checkers !] by Daniel Shawul, CCC, March 25, 2011
 * [|Checkers Is Strongly-Solved for 8-pieces] by Ed Trice, CCC, February 12, 2017
 * [|Checkers Bitboard representation] by Pranav Deshpande, CCC, July 02, 2017 » Bitboards

=External Links=
 * [|Checkers (English draughts) from Wikipedia]
 * [|The Checker Maven]
 * [|The American Checker Federation - Welcome to the ACF website]
 * [|Checkers (ICGA Tournaments)]
 * [|AITopics / Checkers]
 * [|Chinook - World Man-Machine Checkers Champion]
 * [|A brief history of computer checkers] by Martin Fierz
 * [|Marion Tinsley from Wikipedia]
 * [|2002 World Computer Championship]
 * [|Las Vegas computer checker championship] by Martin Fierz
 * [|500 billion billion moves later, computers solve checkers] from ChessBase news, July 19, 2007
 * [|CheckerBoard] by Martin Fierz
 * [|CheckerBoard], A blog on checkers programming by Martin Fierz
 * [|Portable Draughts Notation from Wikipedia]
 * [|Checker Bitboards Tutorial] by Jonathan Kreuzer
 * [|Gui Checkers 1.05] by Jonathan Kreuzer
 * [|Perft for Checkers] » Perft
 * [|Welcome to the checkers programs page] by Jean-Bernard Alemanni
 * [|How Checkers Was Solved] by [|Alexis C. Madrigal], [|The Atlantic - World Edition], July 19, 2017

=References= =What links here?= include page="Checkers" component="backlinks" limit="100"
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