A world championship caliber checkers program.
Jonathan Schaeffer, Joseph Culberson, Norman Treloar, Brent Knight, Paul
Lu, and Duane Szafron.
Artificial Intelligence vol 53, 273-289, 1992.
Abstract
The checkers program Chinook
has won the right to play a 40-game match for the World Checkers Championship
against Dr. Marion Tinsley. This was earned by placing second, after Dr.
Tinsley, at the 1990 U.S. National Open, the biennial event used to determine
a challenger for the championship. This is the first time a program has earned
the right to contest for a human world championship. In an exhibition match
played in December 1990, Tinsley narrowly defeated Chinook 7.5-6.5.
This paper describes the program, the research problems encountered and our
solutions. Many of the techniques used for computer chess are directly
applicable to computer checkers. However, the problems of building a world
championship caliber program force us to address some issues that have, to
date, been largely ignored by the computer chess community.
joe@cs.ualberta.ca