CHECKERS IS NOT SOLVED !!

[vb4]

I spoke to Jonathan, one of the players involved in Chinook, about this and he assured me that he has not solved checkers and that he asked me to post this to make you all aware of this. That explains why so many of you have been wondering why he didnt get better press with this and now we understand why.

Thanks,

Les

[Mark]

Hi all-

I emailed Jonathan to congratulate him and, surprisingly, he replied that checkers is not solved yet. Pretty interesting that the web page announcing the news is now gone from the Univ of Alberta site. It was very clear on the site yesterday that checkers was solved. Perhaps they just found an error in their proof or maybe he's making a distinction between "solved" and "weakly-solved"??

In March they posted this:
"March 1, 2007. Proofs are going very well! Stay tuned for exciting news in the next few months. "

I had been checking back at their site every few days for updates and yesterday the site had changed, making the announcement that checkers was solved. I wish I had copied the site.

I'm really not going crazy regards,

Mark

[Mark]

Hi all-

I emailed Jonathan to congratulate him and, surprisingly, he replied that checkers is not solved yet. Pretty interesting that the web page announcing the news is now gone from the Univ of Alberta site. It was very clear on the site yesterday that checkers was solved. Perhaps they just found an error in their proof or maybe he's making a distinction between "solved" and "weakly-solved"??

In March they posted this:
"March 1, 2007. Proofs are going very well! Stay tuned for exciting news in the next few months. "

I had been checking back at their site every few days for updates and yesterday the site had changed, making the announcement that checkers was solved. I wish I had copied the site.

I'm really not going crazy regards,

Mark

Just another thought... Maybe they are preparing for a big announcement shortly and put up a few of the new web pages as a test and I happened to see them before they took them down. Hope I didn't steal their thunder by announcing it early...

Mark

[Terry McCracken]

I spoke to Jonathan, one of the players involved in Chinook, about this and he assured me that he has not solved checkers and that he asked me to post this to make you all aware of this. That explains why so many of you have been wondering why he didnt get better press with this and now we understand why.

Thanks,

Les

Hmmm...Martin told me this was old news! I think Jonathan must have felt he had solid proof...? This is odd.

[Terry McCracken]

Hi all-

I emailed Jonathan to congratulate him and, surprisingly, he replied that checkers is not solved yet. Pretty interesting that the web page announcing the news is now gone from the Univ of Alberta site. It was very clear on the site yesterday that checkers was solved. Perhaps they just found an error in their proof or maybe he's making a distinction between "solved" and "weakly-solved"??

In March they posted this:
"March 1, 2007. Proofs are going very well! Stay tuned for exciting news in the next few months. "

I had been checking back at their site every few days for updates and yesterday the site had changed, making the announcement that checkers was solved. I wish I had copied the site.

I'm really not going crazy regards,

Mark

Crap I bookmarked it too, but it's gone

I think I'm going to talk with Martin about this, and see if I can find out what the hell is going on.

Terry

[MikeB]

Crap I bookmarked it too, but it's gone

I think I'm going to talk with Martin about this, and see if I can find out what the hell is going on.

Terry

Google has it cached , go to the line that says "2007: Checkers is solved. Perfect play leads to a draw."

now you see it, now you don't regards,

Michael

[Terry McCracken]

Crap I bookmarked it too, but it's gone

I think I'm going to talk with Martin about this, and see if I can find out what the hell is going on.

Terry

Google has it cached , go to the line that says "2007: Checkers is solved. Perfect play leads to a draw."

now you see it, now you don't regards,

Michael

Thanks Mike...still don't know what's going on?

Terry

[Leto]

Crap I bookmarked it too, but it's gone

I think I'm going to talk with Martin about this, and see if I can find out what the hell is going on.

Terry

Google has it cached , go to the line that says "2007: Checkers is solved. Perfect play leads to a draw."

now you see it, now you don't regards,

Michael

And it wasn't just that line, it also specifically said that they have had computers working on solving it since 1989 (with a gap in the 1997 to 2001 period), and that they announced on May 8 2007 that they solved Checkers, and that it is the largest game to be solved to date. Still says that on the cached web page.

I don't know what's going on, perhaps they weren't really ready to announce it yet, or maybe it was just a joke from their webmaster.

[Denis P. Mendoza]

May 8, 2007 was the announcement on the new Chinook site that checkers was solved as well as the wiki sites. Martin and Ed should have known this as they are the most active checkers authors (aside from Aurora Borealis Software team with the strong Kallisto engine by Igor Korshunov of Wildcat). There wasn't any comments regarding this on their respective sites as well. Now all information was erased on this site: http://www.ualberta.ca/~kulchits/

The "project" folder containing Chinook team developments was removed, though Google cache still saved the pages. It's pretty rare that the news was released almost a month ago yet Jonathan wasn't aware of this.

This document probably made one of games group member set-up a fast announcement that "checkers is solved".

http://www.cs.potsdam.edu/sigcse07/schaefferTalk.pdf

So..it is yet a theorem as of this moment. Thanks for the info Les.

[nczempin]

May 8, 2007 was the announcement on the new Chinook site that checkers was solved as well as the wiki sites. Martin and Ed should have known this as they are the most active checkers authors (aside from Aurora Borealis Software team with the strong Kallisto engine by Igor Korshunov of Wildcat). There wasn't any comments regarding this on their respective sites as well. Now all information was erased on this site: http://www.ualberta.ca/~kulchits/

The "project" folder containing Chinook team developments was removed, though Google cache still saved the pages. It's pretty rare that the news was released almost a month ago yet Jonathan wasn't aware of this.

This document probably made one of games group member set-up a fast announcement that "checkers is solved".

http://www.cs.potsdam.edu/sigcse07/schaefferTalk.pdf

So..it is yet a theorem as of this moment. Thanks for the info Les.

If it were a theorem, it would be proved. If it's not proved, it's a conjecture.