AMERICAN
CHECKERS or BRITISH DRAUGHTS
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This game is probably
the best known in the world, and when you speak about checkers, a lot of
people thinks to that kind of rules. In The rules This game is played on
a 8x8 board (64 squares). Double corner is on
the right of each player. The player who has
black pieces begins. Moves of the men The men can move on
each empty forward left and forward right if it is empty. When they arrive on
the last line, they become kings. Move of the kings The kings can move on
each empty square around them (forward and backward). Captures If you have the choice
between several captures, you can choose the one that you want (maximum or
not maximum) ; but you can only stop in a square where there is nothing more
to capture. Capture by the men The men can capture
forward only, by jumping over the opponent piece (man or king), if the piece
is near it, and the following square is empty. If they can jump again from
the arrival square, they must continue the capture. You will see easily that
the higher number of pieces that they can capture in a row is 3 . Capture by the
kings The kings can capture
like the men, but forward and backward. Who wins, who loses
? The loser is the one
who cannot move any more (no piece or all pieces blocked). The winner is his
opponent, of course. There may be draw
if : - opponents agree for
a draw - the same position is
encountered 3 times Some history I will not try to
write here about checkers origins and Edgar Alan Poe, but just mention that
American checkers is the first game where the computer began to contest human
brainpower in games. From 1954 to 1994
(with a long break between these dates, when he stopped playing for working)
, Nobody could win
against him (he lost only 7 championship games in 30 years). In In 1994, the same
opponent played again the final games. In 1995, Chinook
finally won the championship, against Don Lafferty : 32 games, 31 drawn, 1
won for Chinook at the 31st game. This champion title to
a computer made people understand that computers could be better than human
on a field where humans thought to stay the first ones : pure cleverness in
sophisticated games. The victory of Deep
Blue against A.Kasparov 4 years later was only a remake. Finally, in april
2007, Chinook team could announce that the checkers game was solved, that
means that the computer can calculated all the moves from the first one to
avoid loss (if none of the players makes a mistake, the game will be draw). |
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