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It is free, and it is supplied with source code so you can see how it works. It won't let you quit unless you concede the game! It's fortunate that the company, Software Creations,is no longer in business (as far as I can tell) so you can't throw your money away on this one. To be fair, it's really a chess machine which also plays checkers. Overall: Sort of adequate, but disappointing; could have been much better done, and the author should have gotten an OK from Martin before putting this up for sale on a profit-making basis. There are definite strength variations in this group, but these are the few and the proud. I am not an expert in this area, far from it, but it seems to me that one could design an even better computer program. This is freeware, by the way. KCheckers is pretty specialized in that it runs under the KDE environment of X-Windows of Linux (recent versions require Qt instead). The animation (or lack of, really) was so fast that pieces changed position faster than an eyeblink, leaving me wondering what move I made, let alone the computer opponent. and it could not find the win on level 15 (60 sec). Good grief. I do not accept any advertisement. The play is terrible, but the engine tries to make up for it by cheating and not taking some jumps! I was not able to evaluate self-learning mode. Other Checkers Java Applets: Maverick Checkers easily defeated all the other checkers applets I matched it against. There is a 3D-board shown in front of the actress, and a larger 2D board to the right where you click on piece, click on square to make your moves. Well, on with the show. The comments are my own interpretation of an analysis I ran with KingsRow. Chinook is the strongest 8 8 checkers program around today. It shows the squares as numbered 1-32 from the top down, even if you are playing Red and Red is at the bottom. Second, and quite important, is that there is no analysis mode as such. He is looking for a host to make these available for general downloading – any takers out there? But we had a hunch, and so we played GUI against Nexus, the strong forerunner of the world-class Nemesis program. Very strong checkers / draughts player. (In the latest versions, the analysis output is shown on a browser page which is well arranged, and clear and easy to understand. This does not mean that it is good, however. Overall: Superb (based on features and interface only). As with chess, knowledge is the Achilles' heel of the program. This was particularly interesting because both programs are written in Java and can be played through a web browser. So, is Actual Checkers that poor a player, as the Class D ranking implies? You can set up positions, take back moves, and work from a well-formatted move list. The program often uses gobs of time in the early stages of the game and then runs short at the end. A general game engine of this type is no small achievement. I feel pretty good about having gotten a draw against it a couple of times; let's not discuss how many hundreds of games I've lost. They could have at least surveyed the market. I think the addition of an endgame database and some work on time control are what the authors ought to look at next. The actual logic for choosing moves is quite brief and very easy to understand. Actual Checkers opening book is evidently not anything like large enough to really matter. I use it mostly because it will run under Linux (Cake++ and Kcheckers are the only others). I ran Spybot, disabling the game, and I refuse to re-install this thing to try to get a better determination. The package contains several other games, nice graphics and interface, and a clickable move list, so there are some features here, and some attention to detail. To be sure, there is no opening database, and the program calculates 9-13 as the best move for black (an obvious bias toward tactics and winning and preserving material). As I said, I've used this program a lot for one minute speed games. Maybe; the program easily provideds that much value but perhaps you don't want to support an author who is trying to profit from an unauthorized implementation of someone else's work. Music and sound are also a part of the package. Of course, the weaknesses are evident: there are no opening or endgame databases, and the features are basic (save, restore, set-up, undo moves). This, I guess, is supposed to 'help' you, but if there is a series of jump moves, the pieces fly around so fast you'll find yourself saying 'Chto eta?'. Sorry! That is not at all to say that it plays particularly well. There is no doubt, though, that, is no longer marketed and in the not too distant future may be available for free, or nearly free, distribution. Rating Parameters. Overall: One of the best of the non-pretentious programs out there. It turns out that they did not write a checkers engine. If you don't want to go all the way and buy Nemesis, certainly this is an inexpensive and most viable option. The screen is made of a bunch of separable windows and you can move them all over the place if so desire. Overall: A serious effort marred by lack of features and off-the-wall marketing that turn this into just a toy. It is very appealing and very well done. I actually won a game in which I was two pieces down because the program ran out of move time! Do not install this game unless you have a copy of Spybot Search and Destroy ready to run. Not many other people besides myself will have the patience to do this nor is the reward for so doing very tangible. As mentioned in an earlier review, neural net programming dominates backgammon. There is also quite a bit of interesting background material on how the program was developed. You can play a watered down version of Chinook on the Web. Overall: Too much trouble for too little reward. I had first matched it up against WCC Gold Plus, and Sage; to be sure, Actual lost to both, but played credibly in a 3 minute game. There are also save/restore features. This program should by rights be given the "Don't Bother" award, but I think it might just be engaging enough to introduce children to checkers, at least until they learn the rules and learn a little technique. To run it you first need to load an ANSI driver. Maverick Checkers defeated Diamond in most of the games and drew a few. Six levels of play, many varieties, save and restore features: alas, this one too is destroyed by Simple Checkers, even at the highest level of play, laughingly characterized as 'an incredibly strong computer opponent.' I run it from a floppy in environments where I don't want to install software to the hard drive. It also plays rather poorly, even at the so-called 'master' level. The whole purpose of this offering seems to be to overlay some sort of medieval theme; actually playing checkers is clearly secondary. It is sad, but there is just one Palm program that can even come close to Simple Checkers in playing strength, and that is a less-than-wonderful port to the Palm of Simple Checkers itself! The game has a number of pre-rolled personalities, from the 'Kid' who is a weaker player, all the way to 'Einshtain' (I just love the Yiddish rendition) who is the strongest. The program is capable of searching to … Gui Checkers however seems to perform better towards the end of the game which may be a result of the endgame database. Wincheck is an interesting sort of a thing. It's a quick download and a nice little program with a simple but adequate display and drag and drop interface. But, I do plan to get the next release of Nemesis (if it is ever available) and review it in due course; and WCC Platinum is in my hands with a review to follow. Overall: I can't see $15 for this unless you just want another nice toy. Barely. I bought it with the idea of playing with it on a long flight from the States to Nairobi that I was about to take, but I didn't use it on the plane as I thought the noise might disturb fellow passengers. Daniel Lemire is a computer science professor at the University of Quebec (TELUQ) in Montreal. Deep Brew drew against Simple Checkers; Deepbrew was a man down but Simple Checkers allowed draw by repetition. I managed to get this screenshot, which has a small white artifact which I invite you to ignore. You can't review moves; the game moves aren't saved; and games can't be saved and restored. I don't have the answer as yet but plan to experiment further. There is a full 3D environment; the checkerboard is on the floor of a large room, and there are controls for zooming, panning, rotating, etc..... all the stuff you've come to expect in a video game. The author's claim that this program can be used for tournament training is beyond comment. As it stands, you can get that in the analysis, HTML export, or clipboard, but not directly along with the game. But unfortunately it just can't play anything remotely resembling a decent game. It played a reasonable game with Simple Checkers, getting a draw twice in the two games I tried. The program is capable of searching to depths that make it a feared tactician. CiteSeerX - Document Details (Isaac Councill, Lee Giles, Pradeep Teregowda): Chinook is the strongest 8 x 8 checkers program around today. There's a contrast control which helps. Another flashy program that can't play checkers. However, if you feel an injustice has been done, please contact me. The experiment was refined over time, and when a graphical-user interface (GUI) was added, Jon gave his program a logical name: GUI Checkers. There are several analysis modes and a number of otehr features, but the documentation is mostly non-existent so learning how to use these features is difficult or impossible. Literally. There is no opening book and no endgame database. There are tradeoffs between the two, making a clear choice difficult, but Sage is still developed and supported while Nexus is not. In the end, while this is a nice effort, it is outdone in every category by other free programs. Best stay away from this one. You choose your opponent from a set of named personalities, at three different levels of play. (In chess mode, you can undo back to the beginning of the game. And anyways, who am I, a poor player on a good day, to be reviewing checker programs? Gui Checkers - the old web page and program Bitboard tutorial - an old tutorial page of mine Automated tuning/learning in chess - my more recent work with chess. The implementation of this is so bad that it doesn't understand double (or multiple) jumps, and there is a little box you have to click when you have a multiple jump to make (which apparently the game thinks is optional). Play the strongest checkers program in the world I just attended a talk by Jonathan Schaeffer the guy behind Chinook, the best checkers computer player in the world. Buy Sage instead and have $30 left over. There are two main features lacking in the Gold Plus version. It has proven very successful in Backgammon, and in fact the world class Backgammon programs such as GNU and Snowie use this approach. I enjoy playing against this engine, but I generally don't fare well. The display is not exactly fancy but that shouldn't be the deciding factor. Update: the author is currently (March 2006) working on a beta of a Windows version that is very promising and is orders of magnitude better than the old DOS version. After that, though, you need to look elsewhere. Recently XCheckers has been made to work with the Cake++ engine, an ancestor of Cake Manchester and earlier versions in the Martin Fierz Cake series (e.g. Martin Fierz has mentioned the possibility of a limited-memory port of Cake Manchester; now that would be something! I only review programs with which I have personally spent sufficient time to get a basis for a fair and equitable evaluation. Deep Brew played credibly and is likely short of Simple Checkers in strength; I don't consider it strong enough to go in Class B, but it clearly doesn't belong in Class D; hence, Class C! This is likely to be a strong Class B entrant. This is done not as a letter grade, but with a few words or a short phrase. Jonathan Herbert Schaeffer FRSC (born 1957) is a Canadian researcher and professor at the University of Alberta and the former Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence.. (Pocket Checkers allows a man to jump to king and continue jumping, and gives you the option to not require forced jumps.). You must do your own analysis prior to spending money or making selections. First, the 3D scrolling on my 2Ghz Pentium with high-end video card was unbelievably slow, choppy, and erratic, to the point of near unusability. So I managed to borrow a registered copy just to see if it was any better at the 'advanced' level. But to use the full potential of the program you need the $50 analysis version. ; 4. Stay away from this one. Class D. Class D programs lose to Simple Checkers consistently, but play along well enough to have given at least a credible performance. If you can help me with this, please write bnewell@bobnewell.net . There is another way to alter playing strength, though. This one has a nice interface with a choice of 2-D or a 3-D board, a selection of playing 'strengths' and a game review feature. (Some of these features exist in player to player mode, but that isn't the point here.). So, live with the off-color colors. Sage will use the Chinook 6-piece end game data base as well (although it seems up to you to be sure it's installed). The author took the early work done by IBM in applying neural network techniques (called here 'Darwinian') and extended the concept. It didn't come off in the end as a true expert player, but the attempt was well-made and shows it. Class C. These are programs that are roughly as good as Simple Checkers. (We are on a shaky footing here; as updated versions are made available for download, the situation will surely change. I played this against PC Simple Checkers. The interface is a little annoying; you click on a piece, drag the mouse to the destination square and click again. This is a $10 shareware program and it should be avoided. Generally speaking, these modules play pretty poorly. If you want a program that plays a world class game, is full of useful features, and is inexpensive (free, in fact) use the Cake Manchester or KingsRow engine with CheckerBoard. They have new bug fixes, enhancements for PDN3.0, and the PDNsearch function now works with all the different checkers variations supportedby the program. It certainly has potential, though, and perhaps some day will become a contender. Castillo's Simple Checkers Review in progress. you'll find things like: Complete game analysis. The tool follows … There are few features at all; just single level move undo. There are many, many more programs out there that fall into Class F; I simply don't have funds to buy them all or time to review them all. - that move is made before you have a chance to say 'Nyet, maya droogh.' And an important feature is that it runs perfectly under Linux using the DOS emulator. Elo Difference Calculator - My online elo rating calculator. Now that would move us in the right direction! Some years ago, Jon Kreuzer started work on a checker playing program as an experiment in developing game-tree searching code. You can choose three opponents with three levels each: Novice, Intermediate, and Advanced; or you can go all the way and play Blondie herself at the Expert level. Overall: A nice toy but not a serious player. There is no move list, analysis, etc., but then again, this is a small and unpretentious item that just happens to play a fine game of checkers. This isn't really necessary in 8x8 American/English checkers, but I'm sure it's a holdover from the other games in this series. The CheckerBoard install files below are more current than the ones atMartin's site. In my own practice play, I often alternate between Sage and KingsRow. Some of these products, to be sure, have flashy graphics, music, outlandish themes, and all sorts of trappings intended to 'dress up' a game that in fact stands on its own quite nicely, thank you. Again, I use the American school grading system, where A is the best grade and F is the worst (failing, in fact). Since the display itself can be made to look very nice, and there is a position set-up option, I use Actual to generate large board diagrams to use elsewhere on this web site. Chinook is the strongest 8 × 8 checkers program around today. It didn't add up. I tried this with an endgame position and the program gave me back about 30 master games to browse through and learn from, all of them containing the position I specified at some point in the game. There is an option for a numbered board, but it is flawed. Should you buy Blondie24, "Checkers With An Attitude"? In fact, I benchmark other programs against Simple Checkers, as you've seen here. Gui Checkers however tended to exceed the time limit a lot. I personally find this useful; I can compare my moves with published play later on and see howthey may differ. Accessily. Cake will run with Sage, for instance.) You could also look at Checkers Plus; it can't play checkers worth a hoot, but it does have a lot of variety. This is a cute little item that, if set at a high enough level, will play about as well as Zillions of Games. I don't consider programs that you can play against on-line. Pretty cheesy. Unlike Pocket Checkers, it plays by the real rules. It has the advantage of being small (about 30k!) I also run it on some ancient hardware just for fun or when that's all that is available. Maybe this is stealth mode? With it you use any of several engines. The program lists moves, at least, but in chess notation. Those who have done so have found me to be very willing, and in fact anxious, to correct errors. I'll just stick to the 'play against the computer' selection. This is really not-so-fine checkers, at least for play quality. In all fairness, this is really a Shashki (Russian checkers) program, with American/English checkers added on. Platinum is no longer marketed and in the not too distant future may be available for free, or nearly free, distribution. ; 5. It falls short of the small freeware program Damas99 in every respect; and while playing almost even with Simple Checkers (with a huge time advantage) it offers none of the features of the free CheckerBoard interface. Despite having no opening book or endgame database, Deep Brew plays quite a decent game. This is another world-class engine, and based on the competition version, at the moment likely the world's best, if by a narrow margin. The feature set is very good. This program involves a self-play simulation where each player’s activity was recorded. I've found myself in the French interface a number of times because I was too lazy to reselect English. Will it do analysis? Martin Fierz, the author, freely publishes the source code for Simple Checkers. There are a couple of nice visual features, for example, three different board sizes and color customizations, although to my eye the board is just a bit off-square. Site optimized for viewing with the open-source Firefox browser. What I have found is that at the higher levels, its play is not terrible (ie: it sometimes beats me, a very rank amateur) until the endgame at which point it seems to flounder. Sometimes I just want that 'softer' feel and a look at Sage's opening book. When playing against the computer, there are no features at all. Calculate the best move for a position. It, no doubt, has a very slow, low power processor in it -- but what can you expect for something that runs on 3 AAA batteries. (Sage allows substitution of engines, though, at the loss of some features. If someone says they have a championship level program, they need to be able to back that up. Which Backgammon Program Is Strongest? MVP Software is a venerable name in the shareware business. Complete, flexible search and recall in extremely large databases of games in PDN format (thousands available on the internet). So I played Simple Checkers against Actual Checkers, making things as even as possible, and setting the time control to five seconds per move. The opening book supplied with the download version is calculated, and is just shy of 100,000 positions. Class F. Class F programs are easily outclassed by Simple Checkers and don't even put up credible resistance. Also, the default graphics set (and language) doesn't seem to be saved between program runs. Here's another program that seems to search about one level deep, and has trouble figuring out whether or not it's playing giveaway checkers. I factor cost into the overall rating, and I comment on cost, but I go no further. The neural network approach, which I can't begin to fully explain, relies on the program playing itself and learning from its experiences. NeuroDraughts is easily defeated by Simple Checkers. These are the products that, in their trivial implementations, in turn trivialize the Grand Old Game, and perpetuate the public concept that checkers is 'easy' and just 'a kid's game.' A few weeks ago, I was in Circuit City and saw a hand held checker game called "LCD Chess & Checkers" by Excalibur Electronics for $11.99 (normally $14.99, lists for $24.95). Kaspersky — Free extras like a VPN, dark web monitoring, and a password manager. (In both the top and bottom of these ratings, making distinctions is difficult. The shareware version only allows for plays between two human players! I also comment on opening and endgame play: does the program have an opening book or an endgame database, and of what type and size? Overall: Not nearly as good a player as you would have expected. If you run Search and Destroy to get rid of eZula, the next time you run the game your screen locks up solid. Uh... no such thing. Some older programs fall here as well; they were at one time in better standing but have either fallen behind or were not developed further. They call it the 'perfect play' database and I do not pretend to understand the details, except that the authors have written papers to show why it is better than the Chinook databases, and they may be right. Other ratings to come. Or, if you are even less interested in playing strength, but want something with a more flashy look, you could always spend a whole $1 on Classic Checkers. It (the engine, not the canary) runs with the CheckerBoard interface, and was developed by Angel Galan Galan of the University of Barcelona. Analysis mode as such the strongest checkers program 50 analysis version a credible performance us in the early stages of program. I said, I often alternate between Sage and KingsRow along well enough to really.. That up which has a small white artifact which I have personally spent sufficient time to get of... 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