King it

There are actually three stories in Kenneth Chang's piece in the Times, Champion at Checkers That Cannot Lose to People.

One the putative subject; another the astonishing human; and third the step closer to humans feeling like second class citizens on our own world.

Oh well; at least we'll always have each other to jump over.

Checkers has been solved.

A computer program named Chinook vanquished its human competitors at tournaments more than a decade ago. But now, in an article published Thursday on the Web site of the journal Science, the scientists at the University of Alberta who developed the program report that they have rigorously proved that Chinook, in a slightly improved version, cannot ever lose. Any opponent, human or computer, no matter how skilled, can at best achieve a draw. ...

The earlier incarnation of Chinook, relying on artificial intelligence techniques and the combined computing power of many computers, placed second in the 1990 United States championship behind Marion Tinsley, the world champion, who had won every tournament he had played in since 1950.

That achievement should have earned Chinook the right to challenge Dr. Tinsley, a professor of mathematics at Florida A&M University, for the world championship, but the American Checkers Federation and the English Draughts Association refused to sanction a match. After much wrangling in the checkers world, Dr. Tinsley and Chinook battled for the man-versus-machine checkers title in 1992.

Dr. Tinsley won, 4 to 2 with 33 draws. Chinook’s two wins were only the sixth and seventh losses for Dr. Tinsley since 1950. In a rematch two years later, Dr. Tinsley withdrew after six draws, citing health reasons. Cancer was diagnosed, and Dr. Tinsley died seven months later. ...

The next game Dr. Schaeffer hopes to conquer is poker, which is harder to solve, because players do not have complete knowledge of their opponents’ positions. Next week, his program, Polaris, will take on two professional poker players in Texas Hold ’Em for the $50,000 man-versus-machine world championship.

Soon, computers may not just be winning games, but taking people’s money, too.

Photo of Tinsley found in various places online.