Author's description:

This is based on an older checkers playing program that I made in three days originally, plus 3 more days to get the first GUI version, new move generation, better search and cleaner code. It was made to be a demonstration of game-programming techniques, but has grown since then. I no longer keep track of time spent on this program. Newer features are forward-pruning, improved GUI, and a checkerboard version.

It helped a lot that I've made other game playing programs, and I was able to borrow and adapt some code. The source is downloadable, so if you're interested in game playing programs, and want to see source code for some techniques used in strong game playing programs, download it and look it over. Sometime I'll try to make the source simpler to read.

I've heard checkers has an average branching factor of about 3, because all jumps are forced. So this program can search around 16 ply ahead plus a few extra ply for extensions and quiescence search of jumps, (on an AMD 1.4 ghz, in 3 seconds), or over 24 ply when there are fewer checkers, or fewer moves, and not many kings.

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