Checkers players worldwide will mourn the end of their beloved game. A team of Computer Scientists at the University of Alberta instructed one of their computers to start playing checkers 18 years ago, and finally it has finished, having played every possible game of checkers.
The decisive outcome:
The computer program, called Chinook, has determine that if both players in a game of checkers, also called ‘draughts’, play a perfect game, it will end in a draw (as opposed to some other games which result in a win for the player who played first).
What this means is that every game of checkers you play for the rest of your life you will know has already been played by that computer, rendering the actual strategies as practices of the game spiritually depressing and mentally futile. Never again can a person play a game of checkers and think to themselves that something they did in the game was new, or revolutionary. Playing the game in this strange new world would be the strategic and entertainment equivalent of running over a coffee stir with your car.
Likely, no one will ever play the game again… Good thing I’ve always hated Checkers.
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