Jonathan Schaeffer’s One Jump Ahead is 496 pages long. It tells how he
developed the computer program Chinook—”challenging human supremacy in
checkers” (draughts to some of us). Whether the challenge was successful or not
is the cliffhanging part of the tale. He remarks that he had to force himself to
start the book. “Once I did, however, it was hard not to stop!” How’s that
again? Published by Springer-Verlag, £25.50, ISBN 0387949305.
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