Monday, February 20, 2006

The fastest suicide checkers loss?

I've been playing around a bit with my book generator for suicide checkers because of the upcoming match against the Canadians. I was looking at early losses in suicide checkers, and this is the earliest I found so far:

1. 10-15 22-17 2. 6-10 23-19??

Red to move and win! Can you solve it? Can you find a faster way to lose a game of suicide checkers?

2 comments:

Martin Fierz said...

Hi Zadius,

that's not what I'm looking for: your game is "flawed" in the sense that white is actively helping red to win (e.g. 21-17 instead of 28-24 on 2nd-last move wins for white). I'm looking for the earliest proven loss. In the game I posted, that is after the 2nd move of white - from then on, the game is lost.

cheers
Martin

Martin Fierz said...

Well solved, Zadius! The line in your first post with 7...17x10 is one of the reasons why suicide checkers is tough to program: In general, it is good to win material, but there are also positions where you can be lots of material up in a "quiet" position, like here, before 12. 5-9 - and still lose. In regular checkers, I can stop the search in such positions, but in suicide checkers that isn't possible.