How to Win Games and Beat People by Tom Whipple

Author:Tom Whipple
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062443748
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-10-28T16:00:00+00:00

It is, however, a billion billion billion times less complex than chess, a game so complex that even our estimates of its complexity involve guesswork. Unlike chess, checkers seemed to be just—just—within the powers of humans to perfect. “There was a human player, Marion Tinsley, who was world champion,” says Professor Schaeffer. “He was idolized. Between 1950 and 1990 he only lost three games. He was as close to perfection as you could imagine a human being. But,” he adds, “he wasn’t quite perfect. He would make a mistake. It may have been only once every ten to fifteen years, but he would make a mistake.”

For many of the checkers players who angrily contacted Professor Schaeffer, they did so out of a sense that his program somehow besmirched the memory of Tinsley. Professor Schaeffer thinks this is silly. “I’m a competitive chess player. I know many players out there are better than me, but I still go and play because I want to get better. The fact that there is a computer player out there who happens to be much much better than me is irrelevant.”

Gradually, though, the checkers community has grown used to the idea of there being an omniscient player—after all, for them Tinsley was practically indistinguishable from perfection anyway. Many have even found a use for the program itself: most notably in solving the “100-Year Problem.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.