Friday, July 20, 2007

Checkers decontstructed

Tic-tac-toe is a simple game, and virtually every 6-year old on the planet has mapped out every permutation of moves possible. Played properly, it's impossible to lose - which includes a game playing DNA computer.

Checkers, with a search space of 5x10^20 is a much more complicated game. After 18 years, researchers at the University of Alberta have finally 'solved' the game, proving that, like tic-tac-toe, when perfectly played always ends in a draw. This makes checkers, 1 million times more complicated than Connect Four (the previous title holder), the most complicated game to have all its maneuvers mapped out.


1 comments:

Anonymous Coward said...

wake me up when they've figured GO, with its e^100 possible moves...