George Miller is an excellent player, but Al Trice is also very strong, Ustica also has a claim,lets wait to see who wins they will be number 1

Purple: Thanks Purple

THE HIT MAN: http://brainking.com/game/Tournaments?trg=9124&tri=44962&trnst=0

I think George Miller is the best player true player who plays here, regardless if he wins the "BEST PLAYER" tournament.

Purple: I don't know how To post a link LOL

THE HIT MAN: Post a link here if it will help the sign-up.

Purple: Heres a back up Tournament.Purple.The Mobs Checkers Challange.If you can Win both tournaments You will be the Best Here at BK Good Luck Have Fun and Enjoy Looking forword to Playing all the Best players because you are all the best.

I'm looking for a partner to practice GAYP (freestyle) published play lines with. Books and/or manuscripts allowed. I can usually play my games fairly quickly moving several times a day. If anyone is interested please send me a PM. Thanks.

The checker tournament kicks off and with the addition of Ed Trice the bar is raised even higher (if that is possible.) Good luck to everybody in this tournament where players who are only "good" can expect to lose most of the games. But everybody can learn. Thanks to all who entered.

If anyone tunes in to Channel 6 tomorrow at 10 AM, they can see me at the Franklin-Wyndham Hotel in Philadelphia in the Main Exhbition Room. In front of me is a checkerboard, and a member of the hotel staff that will be making the moves Chinook sends via instant messenger to his laptop.

JamesHird: Yes he has.. ;)

EdTrice: So which program will you be using against it, Trice?

That version of Chinook has the 6-piece database only and the 1990 version of its opening book.

I will not be playing that one.

The machine I will be playing against has a boatload of RAM (32 GB) and either 4 or 8 processors (I forget which). This will not be done via the web.

EdTrice: I always enjoyed playing Chinook. It was very fast and with your moves it would send you little game notes like "oh oh..you screwed up now." LOL. I started getting mad at a machine. It counted draws as wins for Chinook so it had a big home court advantage.

Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer of the University of Alberta has agreed to let me cross swords with the strongest version of the Chinook checkers program. Once it solves the next slice of databases it is working on, it will have over 39 trillion positions solved (39,000,000,000,000).

Stay tuned for more info.

There have been some sensational results in the sign up so far. We have the number one rated CW, the legendary George Miller, the seldom (if ever) beaten Ustica and many more stars. I am still hoping Bristol (who is very busy) will join as well as some other outstanding players who can only join one tournament and are locked into other ones for now. Also some slightly lower rated people have not joined because they say they have no chance..but I have asked them to see the movie "Rocky" LOL. There is still time and anything can happen. If we can not pull an upset at least we can learn something. So request an invite and no one will be refused.

bullet: Of course, good luck.

Purple: can i get invited?

Jake Lopez: It is real easy to fall into the trap of thinking that anyone who beats you must be using a program. As comforting as that thought may be it is not always accurate. I have learned that myself.

They're all progs

JamesHird: A knight can only join one tournament. I would upgrade him myself but he is scaling down his activity. We already have three of the most awesome players on BK signed..all 2300+ ratings..so while everyone is welcome I again caution that these are highly skilled players.

as a knight I think you can join this tournament if you are invited and Purple said he sent you an invite so it should be joinable right?
Maybe someone can offer to upgrade you to a rook :)

JamesHird: It was nice of you to suggest
someone upgrade my membership,only i am sure people have better things to do with there money than sponcer a down and out checker player,for the moment i am cutting back on internet activities, so my knight status is adequate.

EdTrice: I hope there will be room for both. "Slugfest" sounds pretty fancy to me for a title. LOL. Good luck to everybody.

my tournament is open for all, non-exclusive. it doesn't have a fancy title, and that's the one I will be playing in.

Jake Lopez: It's the best we have to work with and for this tournament everyone will be taken at his/her word.

Most of the top BK checkers players (Ed Trice for one) use programs and/or books to play their games. One little online tournament with cheaters mixed with non cheaters wouldn't reveal "The Best Checkers Player"

JamesHird: Have until June to figure it out. LOL

Purple: eek, I didnt think of that
wouldn't it then be wiser to save this tourney up for when ALL the top players are able to play in it.
Or maybe someone could donate a membership to him? I wont because I dont really know him and I have given far too many memberships away in the past but maybe someone who knows him can pop him a 6 month knight membership or something. It's only 10 bucks.
AD hasn't paid for a membership in a while, maybe he is feeling generous?

JamesHird: Patch (who is a fine player) is committed to another tournament and can't enter as he is not a Rook. There may be others in that situation but anyone who wants an invite can have one.

Purple: This has the makings of being a great tourney Purple.
Also, if any top players refuse, you would have to consider the possibility that they are too scared to lose against other quality opponents

The top 20 have been invited. If you think you can beat these players then request an invite. http://brainking.com/game/Tournaments?trg=8881&tri=42460&trnst=0

http://brainking.com/en/Tournaments?trg=8873&trnst=0

And take a guess who this is:

http://brainking.com/en/Profile?u=15519

Everyone should put you on ignore Ed Trice....you're a cheater

(yawn)

Pedro Martínez: I guess it might be for the best

Jake Lopez: How come you don't get the bulletin, Jake Lopez???

Let's everybody put him on hide, he doesn't get the bulletin!!!

Jake Lopez: If you don't know the answer to that, you don't get the American Checker Federation bulletin. You are now on hide Jake, I will no longer respond to you. Have a great life.

Well did you play it offline or online ?

I did not write the Kingsrow program, and everyone knows I beat the 9-piece database version of Kingsrow 1-0 with 19 draws last November.

It would be great if someone could set up a program for people to play against similar to the one Chinook has. You can still play Chinook but since no one is maintaining the Wall of Honor there is no recognition for beating it. It may be an expensive proposition..I have no idea..but it is something I bet a lot of people would like to see.

Don't you use your kingsrow program, Ed Trice?

I am a candidate to attend the next a.i. gaming conference in Taiwan this coming September. As such, I have been asked to perform a "peer review" of some of the papers that are being submitted for publishing. One of the papers I will be grading is being written by Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer of the Chinook team.

Dr. Schaeffer has already solved the 10-piece database for the game of checkers. The drawback is, you have to start with 5 kings against 5 kings, then do 5 kings vs. 4 kings + 1 checker, 4 kings + 1 checker vs. 4 kings + 1 checkers, etc., until you get to the most interesing database: 5 checkers vs. 5 checkers.

So, to solve the 11-piece datbase, you need to do 6 kings vs. 5 kings... and the whole mess takes forever.

I proposed a means to "jump right to" 6 checkers vs. 5 checkers, knocking off about 12 years of computation (the databases are really that large) in a casual conversation to his team in 2003. It turns out, I was partially incorrect, but they came up with a means to bridge the gap.

Using a new technique, they are tackling 6 checkers vs. 5 checkers without having to do the tremendously wasteful computation starting with the kings.

It is a fascinating paper.

A program's weakness is that it is will not play like a strong human player in the endgame.

I thought that my cited example was obvious.

EdTrice: Then a program's weakness is lack of aggression? I had understood the identified weaknesses were failure to recognize that it is worth playing from man down to get a King and a tendency not to handle a smother.

EVERY program that probes endgame databases will prefer a KNOWN db result to a score backed up from a leaf node that has imperfect information associated with it.

A prorgam would throw away half its army if it could recover it with a draw.

A program would throw away a very mobile king for no reason when it is practically running you out of moves, all for the sole purpose to get into its endgame databases.

This has been demonstrated.

Greg Murray, aka Usurper, is the player named Bullet.

EdTrice: Two possible alternate explanations. One it could have been an inadvertant clerical mistake and he moved before he could take it back..or two he's not a very good player. I admit they are both stretches. I still don't understand what program would King sacrifice unless it was set to play for a draw like some Chinook lines are. I hate to comment on a game still in progress but at the conclusion it would be a great game for analysis.

did everyone ever try this version of solitaire?

it is said to be unsolved ..

you have to let 1 pawn standing in the end and everything else removed

i know the straight variant (its in dutch but you can chose 'solitaire' to play it) .. and can play it perfectly

but i havent tried the diagonal version of it :)

It is up to everyone to decide on their own. I showed a position where there is no reason to throw away a king, yet software programs do it all the time.

I am a researcher of games programming, so I am fairly knowledgeable in this area.

http://www.GothicChess.org/papers.html is one source of technical papers I have written.

I am just stating the facts after I have been given a tip.