This is the text to an email interview I did with Bob Newell for his website, the Checker Maven.
You can visit his site here:

http://www.bobnewell.net/nucleus/checkers.php


Bob - Can you tell us a little about your interest in checkers?

Jon - My interest is more with board game programming in general than with 
checkers specifically. I've known the checkers rules since I was a young 
kid, and in recent years have occasionally played on-line or against a 
computer program, but overall I'm sure I'm a very weak checkers player.

Bob - What is your background in programming and in gaming (or anything
else about yourself that you'd like to say)?

Jon - I have always played games, including classic games like chess, Othello, 
checkers, and go. 3D programming is my main area of interest since I was 
young, but game-playing programs are a close second. My first game-playing 
program, for Othello, was written for a project course at Cornell 
University. Since then I've often done hobby-work on game-playing programs, 
and gotten much better at it.

Any one interested can visit my website www.3dkingdoms.com, which contains 
information about some of the recent programs of all types I've made.

Bob - There are many checker programs out there. Why a new one?

Jon - Gui Checkers was created originally(years ago) because I wanted to try a 
very simple game-tree searcher program and put the source and programming 
information on my webpage. I expanded it since then quite a bit (including 
adding a graphical interface and giving it the unoriginal name "Gui".) More 
recently I noticed Martin Fierz linked to it, and I spent time to greatly 
improve the playing strength to something more respectable.

I'm not sure if it offers anything new. I personally don't know of any other 
open-source checkers programs as strong, but I never researched this, I 
could be wrong. Number of existing programs doesn't matter to me, there are 
more chess programs than checkers ones, and I wrote one of those =)

Bob - You have tested GUI and so have we, with similar results. We find
that GUI is well above Simple Checkers, somewhat above Marujito,
perhaps roughly equals to Damas 99; and very close with Nexus! That
makes GUI possibly a Class "B" program, which is rather strong indeed.
Where will GUI be going in the future? Do you have class A (like KR
or CM)?

Jon - I've managed to get pretty far on Gui Checkers without spending much time 
working on it ( only because I could draw from many years of experience of 
making game-playing programs, and even in places copy my other source code 
completely then alter it .)
I don't believe I'll ever try to come close to Cake or KingsRow, but I know 
some things I can do to make Gui a somewhat stronger/faster searcher, and I 
could generate a better opening book. There are a few interface improvements 
I want to make too. I have a lot of interests (programming and otherwise) 
that compete for my time so I'm never sure if or when I'll get to something.


Bob - What kind of influence do you think computer checkers has had on the 
game?

Jon - (Not sure.)

Bob -  Do you think checkers is going to be "solved" some time in the
foreseeable future, and if so what impact do you think it will have on
the game?


Jon - From what I understand of the game and current state of programs, I think 
it's possible that it will be solved eventually. If solved it would make 
checkers programming less interesting to me, but I don't think it should 
affect games between people.