Solving Checkers

AI has had notable success in building high-performance game-playing programs to compete against the best human players. However, the availability of fast and plentiful machines with large memories and disks creates the possibility of solving a game. This has been done before for simple or relatively small games. In this paper, we present new ideas and algorithms for solving the game of checkers. Checkers is a popular game of skill with a search space of 10(20) possible positions. This paper reports on our first result. One of the most challenging checkers openings has been solved - the White Doctor opening is a draw. Solving roughly 50 more openings will result in the game-theoretic value of checkers being determined.