After 18 years spent playing the game and millions of matches won and lost, a computer has now solved the riddle of whether there can be a perfect game of checkers. Computer scientists working at the University of Alberta in Canada used a program called Chinook to factor out the 500 billion positions possible in any one game of checkers. The result was that it is possible to reach a draw against your opponent but it’s exceedingly rare to happen. Chinook was able to plot out every possible move and reach the determination but for flesh and blood players, thinking ahead 20 or 30 moves down the line is asking a little too much from the software in our heads.

The U of A researchers also said that checkers was by far the most complex game ever to be successfully worked out by a machine. “I think we’ve raised the bar, and raised it quite a bit, in terms of what can be achieved in computer technology and artificial intelligence,” said Jonathan Schaeffer, one of the Canadian scientists. So does this mean we can expect a match between the world’s best chess computer and Chinook, maybe on unfamiliar ground (say a Backgammon match?)