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© Copyright 2002, Jim Loy
You may print this and show it to
others. But, this article will eventually be part of a book that I am writing.
So, please do not distribute it widely.
If you need help reading checkers notation, please print out the numbered board.
While at Walmart, I tried out the little handheld Pocket Checkers from Radica. Here is one of my games:
J. Loy-Pocket Checkers
11-15 23-18 8-11 24-19 15-24 28-19 4-8 27-24
11-16 26-23 16-20 32-27 8-11 18-15 11-18 23-14 9-18 22-15 12-16 19-12 10-28
21-17 28-32 27-23 32-27 RW.
That's not very good play. And the game cheats; with a piece (non-king) it made a double jump into and out of the king row.
Someone should be able to come up with a stronger checkers-playing chip, with some memory, opening book, and ending database. I suppose there is not much market for a computer that can beat people.
I was asked to review the Windows program Strategist Checkers V.1.2. You can download the demo for free, and you can send $10 and get two more skill levels. The bottom skill level is very weak indeed, and the program has almost no handy features. You always move first, and you are Red against Black. You cannot take a move back (undo). Saving a gaime saves the last position only. You cannot save two games. You cannot set up a position and start there. There is no kind of checkers notation displayed, and you cannot print a game. Here is a game:
J. Loy (Red) - Strategist Checkers (Black)
11-15 23-19 8-11 21-17
9-13 26-23 6-9 30-26 9-14 25-21 11-16 29-25 14-18 RW.
Later in this game, the program walked into a triple jump without compensation. Then I sacrificed most of my pieces to get into a 1 vs. 2 loss, and the program repeated the same position 20 times before I quit.
Way back, I wrote a checkers program in BASIC, on my Apple ][+ computer. At its lowest level, it played better than the above programs, and played just as fast (the above programs seem to have a delay built in, to slow down their play to about two seconds per move), on that old slow computer.