The Death of Checkers at the Hands of a Machine Called Chinook
Williamstown - Jonathan Schaeffer, professor and chair of computer science at the University of Alberta, has solved the game of checkers. As the creator of the Chinook project, which began with the goal of designing a computer to win the human World Checkers Championship, Schaeffer will tell his story of the man- versus-machine battle for checkers supremacy on Thursday, Feb. 7. The lecture will begin at 8 p.m. in Wege Auditorium in the Science Quad on the Williams campus. The event is free and open to the public.In 1989, Schaeffer and his team set out to beat the reigning human checkers champion, Marion Tinsely, not by training themselves but by programming a computer. Because Tinsely was as close to perfection at the game as was humanly possible, the computer had to be perfect. In other words, Schaeffer, or more precisely, his computer program named Chinook, had to "solve" checkers.
It took 18 years to achieve the goal of unraveling the mysteries of checkers, and it was filled with ups and downs.
In 1990, Chinook became the first program in any game to win the right to play for a human World Championship, but in 1992, it lost the championship match. Rebounding from its defeat, Chinook was victorious in 1994, and by 1996, it had become clear that the program was superior to any human and it was "retired."
Despite Chinook's retirement, Schaeffer was not satisfied with his program's dominance. He wanted to understand checkers to its core. Consequentially, for 10 years of post-retirement work, Chinook not only beat its opponents but also beat the game itself. On April 29, 2007, Schaeffer and his team announced that checkers is now solved.
In essence, Schaeffer and his colleagues at the University of Alberta have proved that Chinook cannot ever lose. The best that an opponent can achieve is a draw. Indeed, they argue that if two opponents play as perfectly as humanly possible, the outcome will always be a draw, despite the 500 billion billion theoretically possible board positions. That astronomical number of possibilities makes checkers the most complex game that has been solved to date.
As Schaeffer told The New York Times, "from my point of view, thank God it's over." Schaeffer now has his eyes set on mastering poker. Will Texas Hold-em be the next, beloved game to be conquered by a machine? Time will tell. Schaeffer admits that even if he "solves" poker, "chess won't be solved in my lifetime."
For those checker enthusiasts out there determined that a machine named Chinook has not spelled the death of human dominance, you can test your skills at http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~chinook).
