You just can't win.

The game of checkers has been solved. Scientists at the University of Alberta in Canada have developed an unbeatable computer program named Chinook. The best any opponent can do against it is achieve a draw (try it at www. cs.uatberta.ca/~chinook/ptay). Jonathan Schaeffer, reader of the Chinook project, began working on it in 1089. With 500 billion billion possible positions, checkers is the most complex game to be "solved" so far. Solving chess, with billions more possibilities, is still a tong way off--although in 1097, IBM's Deep Blue computer beat Garry Kasparov, who was then the world chess champion. Schaeffer, who also writes chess programs, is now working on a program to take on the world's top poker prayers.

News & Trends was reported by Nicholas Bakalar, Neela Banerjee, Joseph Berger, Kenneth Chang, John T. Edge, and Steven Kurutz of The New York Times; and Suzanne Bilyeu.