Checkers

(and checkers variants)

Checkers was one of the very first games to be implemented on computers, and one of the first to have a successful playing program. Papers about checkers by Samuel were probably cited more than any other in the history of game playing programs. For years, a very successful program, Chinook, defeated all challengers, except one lone human expert, Marion Tinsley. Chinook finally became the undisputed champion in 1995, when Mr. Tinsley died. Subsequently, Checkers was solved in the strictest sense, by generating a complete game tree, in 2007.

All this applies to the traditional "American Standard" checkers, which is close to the game you probably played as a kid, except "jumping own men" is not allowed. There are hundreds of variants, some regional, some modern. Boardspace has several interesting variants;

American Checkers close to the checkers you played as a kid, "no jumping own men"
Frisian Checkers captures orthogonal as well as diagonal.
Turkish Checkers moves and captures orthoginal.
International Checkers larger board and backward captures, maximal captures and flying kings.
AntiDraughts giveaway checkers.
Russian Checkers backward captures, king promotion during multiple jumps.
Bashni Checkers backward captrures, stacking captures instead of removal, king promotion during multiple jumps.
Stacks Checkers backward captures, stacking captures, immediate king creation,

Robots: Beats me (take that literally) but I've never claimed to be a checker player.

Links

Boardspace rankings: Checkers AntiDraughts	Checkers at BoardGameGeek Turkish Checkers International Checkers Frisian Checkers at Boardgamegeek Anti Draughts
Game Database: Checkers AntiDraughts	Russian checkers at BoardGameGeek Bashni checkers at BoardGameGeek
Game Archives: Checkers AntiDraughts

The back story: I've always used an incomplete implementation of checkers as a blank starting point for other game implementations. I was finally inspired by this viral video to expand checkers into a full implementation.

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King's Color

Checkers