Chinook, the unbeatable checkers-playing computer

Scientists at the University of Alberta report that they've built an unbeatable checkers-playing computer. Their machine, Chinook, has solved checkers: It proves that if two players play perfectly, making no mistakes, the game of checkers will result in a draw.

The proof required analyzing 500 billion billion checkers positions -- 5 x 1020 -- a computational process that began in 1989 and has been running on hundreds of processors almost ... Full Story »