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Subject: Re: volunteers needed to help solve checkers in a few months !

Author: GuyHaworth

Date: 03:46:37 10/12/04

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On October 11, 2004 at 18:38:04, Duncan Roberts wrote:

>http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~chinook/
>
>Breaking News!
>We have achieved a milestone in our quest to solve the game of checkers. The
>White Doctor opening (10-14 22-18 12-16) has been solved: it is a draw. This
>means that our program when playing Black (the weak side) will never lose. When
>playing White, our program will never lose and may win (if the opponent makes a
>mistake). You can view our solution to the White Doctor opening here.
>
>Data reuse. Openings transpose into each other. Each additional opening
>increases the chances for reusing the results of one opening on another. The
>only obstacle remaining to completely solving checkers is compute cycles. With
>the current resources we are using, finishing checkers will take a few years.
>With enough resources, the game could be solved in a few months. Contact
>jonathan@cs.ualberta.ca if you have a cluster of computers with at least 3 GB of
>RAM and 300 GB of local disk per machine sitting idle!
>
>
>duncan

This is very interesting.  Just for clarification for non-checkers players:


a)  Is 'Black' the side playing first.
    Was it reckoned to be 'weaker' by virtue of playing first?

b)  What is the back-history of the GHI issue?

c)  Was the Dodgen/Trice role only 'verification'?
    I thought that 'Alberta' and Dodgen/Trice found bugs in each others EGTs.
    Maybe this was at the 9-man level, rather than 7- and 8-man.


Anyway, assuming Black is the first player, it sounds like 8*8 checkers is at
least a draw for the first player.

g



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