Computer program takes draughts crown

It has taken more than 18 years, and hundreds of computers to crunch numbers through the night, but yesterday Jonathan Schaefer declared his job done: he had written the world's first program that was unbeatable at the game of draughts. Chinook, as the program is known, can calculate a winning response to any move made by its opponent. The worst result it can ever have is a draw, according to Dr Schaefer, an expert in artificial intelligence, working at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. The game of draughts, played on a board with eight by eight squares, is the most complicated game ever solved thanks to artificial intelligence. The number of possible positions in a game makes it one million times more complex than Connect Four.