ABSTRACT
Checkers is one of the oldest games known to humankind. It can be traced back to the very cradle of human civilization. An archeological expedition in the 1920s in southern Mesopotamia-now modern-day Iraqunearthed the oldest checkers board ever found, dating back more than 5,000 years. Perhaps the second most important year in the history of checkers (and artificial intelligence) was 1962. This was the year that a computer program defeated a human being for the first time-a checkers champion no less. Developed by IBM, the checkers-playing computer was the world’s first self-learning program and represents one of the earliest demonstrations of artificial intelligence.1
