The Game Stats Appendix A: Further Reading Checkers Organizations American Checker Federation (ACF). http://usacheckers.com. Membership in- cludes the bimonthly ACF Bulletin. English Draughts Association (EDA). http://home.clara.net/davey. Membership includes the occasional English Draughts Journal. Checkers Irving Chernev, The Compleat Draughts Player, Oxford University Press, 1981. A readable and instructive book including the history of the game, openings, strate- gies, endgames, problem solving, and classic games. Chernev is one of the few players to reach the title of master in both chess and checkers. Robert Pike, Checker Power: A Game of Problem Solving, Charlesbridge Pub- lishing, 1997. Pike has authored a series of readable books on using checkers for problem solving (and fun). Robert L. Schuffett, Checkers the Tinsley Way, published privately, 1982. Avail- able through the ACF. This book contains over seven hundred of Tinsley’s games, along with pictures, anecdotes, and statistics from his remarkable career. Richard Pask, The Legendary MFT, Checkered Thinking, 2007. Available at http://www.bobnewell.net/nucleus/checkers.php. The most comprehensive collec- tion of material on Tinsley. Richard Fortman, Basic Checkers, seven volumes, privately published. Available from the ACF and at http://home.clara.net/davey/basicche.html. A detailed intro- duction to the main lines of play of the three-move ballot openings. Computer Checkers History Christopher Strachey, “Digital Computers Applied to Games,” Faster Than Thought, B.V. Bowden (editor), Pitman & Sons, London, 1953. Arthur Samuel, “Some Studies in Machine Learning Using the Game of Check- ers,” IBM Journal of Research and Development 3, 1959, pp. 210-229. 549 550 One Jump Ahead Arthur Samuel, “Some Studies in Machine Learning Using the Game of Checkers—Recent Progress,” IBM Journal of Research and Development 11, 1967, pp. 601-617. Tom Truscott, “The Duke Checkers Program,” Journal of Recreational Mathe- matics 12(4), 1979-80, pp. 241-247. David N.L. Levy (ed.), Computer Games, Volumes I and II, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1988. Contains the pioneering research papers for computer game play- ing. Volume I contains backgammon, chess, checkers (Strachey’s and Samuel’s works), and Scrabble. Volume II contains bridge, chemin-de-fer, dama, dominoes, Go, Gomoku, halma, hearts, Othello, poker, push-over, and Qubic. Solving Checkers The papers in this section plus earlier CHINOOK-related solving work are avail- able at http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/˜chinook. Jonathan Schaeffer, Neil Burch, Yngvi Bjornsson,¨ Akihiro Kishimoto, Martin Muller,¨ Rob Lake, Paul Lu, and Steve Sutphen, “Checkers is Solved,” Science 317(5844), 2007, pp. 1518-1522. The definitive article on solving checkers. Jonathan Schaeffer, Yngvi Bjornsson,¨ Neil Burch, Akihiro Kishimoto, Martin Muller,¨ Rob Lake, Paul Lu, and Steve Sutphen, “Solving Checkers,” International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), 2005, pp. 292-297. Reporting the first solved checkers opening, the White Doctor. CHINOOK The papers in this section plus additional CHINOOK-related work are available at http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/˜chinook. Jonathan Schaeffer, Joseph Culberson, Norman Treloar, Brent Knight, Paul Lu, and Duane Szafron, “A World Championship Caliber Checkers Program,” Artificial Intelligence 53(2-3), 1992, pp. 273-290. The definitive paper on CHINOOK, circa 1991. Unfortunately, we haven’t written an update to this paper to reflect work done subsequently. Jonathan Schaeffer, Yngvi Bjornsson,¨ Neil Burch, Rob Lake, Paul Lu, and Steve Sutphen, “Building the Checkers 10-piece Endgame Databases,” Advances in Com- puter Games 10, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003, pp. 193-210. The paper de- scribes the techniques used to build the ten-piece endgame databases. Yngvi Bjornsson,¨ Jonathan Schaeffer, and Nathan Sturtevant, “Partial Informa- tion Endgame Databases,” Advances in Computer Games 11, Lecture Notes in Com- puting Science #4250, Springer-Verlag, 2005, pp. 11-22. The techniques used to build the partial-information endgame databases. Jonathan Schaeffer, Robert Lake, Paul Lu, and Martin Bryant, “CHINOOK: The World Man-Machine Checkers Champion,” AI Magazine 17(1), 1996, pp. 21-29. The story of the 1994-95 world championship matches. Jonathan Schaeffer, Norman Treloar, Paul Lu, and Robert Lake, “Man Versus Machine for the World Checkers Championship,” AI Magazine 14(2), 1993, pp. 28- 35. The story of the 1992 world championship match. Appendix A: Further Reading 551 Programming Computers to Play Games Jonathan Schaeffer and Jaap van den Herik (eds.), Chips Challenging Champi- ons, Elsevier Science Publishers, 2002. Also appears as a special issue of Artifi- cial Intelligence 134(2), 2002. Contains papers on the latest advances in computer games, including chess, poker, Scrabble, backgammon, and Go. Peter Frey (ed.), Chess Skill in Man and Machine, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1977 (1st edition), 1983 (2nd edition). Although the original edition is over thirty years old, this book is still a gem. If you are interested in writing a chess or checkers program, the Slate and Atkins paper is a historic landmark. Journal of the International Computer Games Association (formerly the Journal of the International Computer Chess Association), http://www.cs.unimaas.nl/icga. A quarterly publication describing the latest results and advances in computers play- ing the classic board and card games. Feng-hsiung Hsu, Behind Deep Blue: Building the Computer that Defeated the World Chess Champion, Princeton University Press, 2002. Hsu relates his personal experiences as part of the DEEP BLUE team. Solving Games Links to all the papers in this section and other solving-related works can be found at http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/˜chinook. John Romein and Henri Bal, “Solving Awari with Parallel Retrograde Analysis,” IEEE Computer 36(10), 2003, pp. 26-33. The techniques used to solve Awari. Jaap van den Herik, Jos Uiterwijk, and Jack van Rijswijck, “Games Solved: Now and in the Future,” Artificial Intelligence 134, 2002, pp. 277-311. Also in Chips Challenging Champions (see above). An excellent overview of the state of the art for solving games circa 2001. Victor Allis, Searching for Solutions in Artificial Intelligence, Ph.D. thesis, De- partment of Computer Science, University of Limburg, Maastricht, The Nether- lands, 1994. Allis discusses the techniques he used to solve Qubic and Gomoku, including proof-number search. The Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org) has an excellent article on the subject (look under “solved board games”). Artificial Intelligence Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, Prentice Hall (multiple editions). A hefty book with both high-level overviews and detailed information. The best book on the market. Appendix B: Tinsley’s Record The sources for this information are Richard Pask’s The Legendary MFT and Robert Schuffett’s Checkers the Tinsley Way. Year Formative Years (1945-1950) Result W-L-D 1945 South Louisiana 1st 1945 Ohio State Junior Championship vs. R. McDowell won 7-0-4 1945 Match vs. Carrol Binsack lost 1-2-7 1946 Inter-State 1st 1946 Cedar Point 1st 1946 U.S. National Championship 2nd 1947 6th District Championship 1st 1947 Chicago Open 1st 1947 Ohio State Open 1st 1947 U.S. Junior Championship vs. Maurice Chamblee won 3-2-25 1948 Ohio State Open 1st 1948 Cedar Point 1st (tied) 1948 U.S. National Championship 1st 1949 Ohio State Open 1st 1949 Cedar Point 1st 1949 Canadian Open 1st 1949 6th District Championship 1st (tied) 1950 Match vs. Ralph Banks won 1-0-5 1950 Match vs. Jack Cox won 1-0-5 1950 Match vs. Roy Hunt won 3-0-11 1950 Cedar Point 1st 1950 Canadian Open 1st 1950 U.S. National Championship 5th 553 554 One Jump Ahead Year Peak Years (1951-1995) Result W-L-D 1951 Lakeside 1st 1952 Match vs. Maurice Chamblee won 1-0-7 1952 Lakeside 1st 1952 Canadian Open 1st (tie) 1952 World Two-Move Championship vs. Newell Banks won 3-0-37 1952 Match vs. William Fraser won 14-0-26 1954 Match vs. Alex Cameron won 4-0-8 1954 U.S. National Championship 1st 1955 World Three-Move Championship vs. Walter Hellman won 3-0-35 1956 U.S. National Championship 1st 1957 British Isles matches N/A 13-0-16 1957 Match vs. James Marshall won 1-0-7 1958 Match vs. Harold Freyer drawn 0-0-10 1958 British Open 1st 1958 World Three-Move Championship vs. Derek Oldbury won 9-1-24 1970 Southern States Championship 1st 1970 U.S. National Championship 1st 1974 Florida Open 1st 1974 Lakeside 1st 1974 Southern States Championship 1st 1974 U.S. National Championship 1st 1975 Florida Open 1st 1975 Lakeside 1st 1975 Southern States Championship 1st 1976 Florida Open 1st 1977 Florida Open 1st 1978 U.S. National Championship 1st 1979 World Three-Move Championship vs. Elbert Lowder won 15-0-10 1981 World Three-Move Championship vs. Asa Long won 3-0-34 1982 Southern States Championship 1st 1982 U.S. National Championship 1st 1983 U.S.-Great Britain International match 1st board 1985 World Three-Move Championship vs. Asa Long won 6-1-28 1986 Match vs. Ron King won 3-0-11 1986 Match vs. J. Wolcott won 2-0-4 1987 World Three-Move Championship vs. Don Lafferty won 2-0-36 1989 World Three-Move Championship vs. Paul Davis won 10-0-20 1989 U.S.-U.S.S.R. match 1st board 1990 U.S. National Championship 1st 1990 Match vs. CHINOOK won 1-0-13 1992 Man-Machine World Championship vs. CHINOOK won 4-2-33 1994 Mississippi State Championship 1st 1994 U.S. National Championship 1st-3rd 1994 Man-Machine World Championship vs. CHINOOK forfeit 0-0-6 Appendix B: Tinsley’s Record 555 The following is a list of games lost by Marion Tinsley in serious tournaments and matches. The principal source for this information is Richard Pask’s The Leg- endary MFT.