Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Checkers

Episode Date: January 25, 2021

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy podcasters/producers Bridgett Greenberg and Cristian Ramirez (Small Beans) for a look at why checkers is secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Checkers. Known for being a game. Famous for being a simple game. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why Checkers is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. Bridget Greenberg and Christian Ramirez are my guests. They are two excellent podcasters and comedy makers and more. They mostly do that with the Small Beans Network. You've heard about that often if you listen to this podcast. Bridget co-hosts two podcasts for Small Beans. One is called Rough Stuff, about the embarrassing magic

of childhood. The other is called Cast and the Curious, about the amazing magic of Dom Toretto and the Fast Movies. Christian made the show Pop Culture Petri Dish there, and he guests and streams all over the place now. Also, as you will hear, the three of us worked together at the former workplace Crack.com, so it was nice to get back together with both these great people for a whole nother thing. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Catawba, Eno, and Shikori peoples. Acknowledge Bridget recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Ortongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. Acknowledge Christian also recorded this on the

traditional land of the Gabrielino-Ortongva and Keech peoples. And acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about Checkers, also known as Drafts if you are British and if I'm understanding the internet resources correctly. Either way, it's that board game with flat pieces that move diagonally and they can jump over each other and then they turn into kings at the end of the board. It's Checkers. It's that board game. Checkers is quietly complicated and surprising and varied, and it is the source of one of my all-time favorite stories in the entire run of this podcast. So let's get into it. Please sit back or pick one of my hands, red or black, red or black, red or black. That's, oh, that's the color you got. That's the pieces

you are. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Bridget Greenberg and Christian Ramirez. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Christian, Bridget, it's so good to see the two of you, as I was just saying. But now I'm saying it in the real show. Yeah.

Howard, thanks. How are you doing? Yeah, no, it counts. You know, doing all right. I'm good. I'm good. It's good to see you too, Alex. It's good to see both of you.

That was weird. This is actually the first Cracked Responds that I did was with the two of you, and it was about Frank Ocean. So it's kind of, yeah. Wow. Yeah. The one when we talked about Frank Ocean building the staircase. That was when like Blonde came out.

Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. Know what I stand by everything I say. I still listen to Blonde all the time. Great album. I assume I had positive things to say about it. Yeah, things have changed, but Frank Ocean being great is not one of those things.

Yeah. Well, and today we're talking about another beloved institution, the game of checkers. And I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or opinion of it. Either of you can start, but how do you feel about checkers? Checkers? I mean, positively, I like checkers. I didn't know how to play chess till early days of the quarantine. So I didn't bother learning until then. So checkers was the chess for people who never bothered to learn. Yeah, it's a lot more straightforward than chess is the easy it was a children's game of chess yeah and yeah for me i don't know it's i mean it's kind of the

same played it when i was a kid i haven't don't think i've played checkers in such a long time and years probably but uh yeah once i mean yeah i learned to play chess when i was in like third or fourth grade my dad taught me so it was like once you learn that that's the kind of thing that i ended up playing against like my family and that kind of stuff right so yeah checkers has kind of got left in elementary school. Yeah, did did either of you have like, I think our first set was a super cheap, just kind of plastic, like eight by eight board, and then the chess pieces and then the checkers pieces all in one box. Yeah.

And then they're like fused together in my head. Because it's like, yeah, just the two games that come together. Yep, a classic. Yeah, I don't know. I know one taught me chess. But I remember my brother setting up a chess game and I just immediately started playing checkers with it because I was like, I can't do this.

This is too much for me to handle. An innovator, really. So they were all the same to me for a while. Yeah. Chess was just elaborate checkers. And I was like, nah, I'm going to stick with the basics here yeah classic of course you can't go wrong yeah i love that you were like nice try with the pointy checkers but i know this game too i could do this i get it what is this horse a little tower i don't know they move the same i and i think i had i had christian's experience where like one time my dad showed me how each of

the pieces worked and then i i feel like there's levels of learning chess where it's like you don't know it at all yeah you know how the pieces work and then there's that level where people actually start seeing moves ahead and stuff and i'm still i think i'm still not really there yeah but the i i like learned chess in the sense that i knew the pieces and then same with checkers i just knew how to do it and i'm probably not very good yeah yeah i'm now okay chess i've been playing a lot online no okay that's good quarantine has uh as as got me there i used used to run away when people asked to play chess with me. I'll be like, yeah, I'll be right back. And then just never showed up because I didn't want to. I was embarrassed by not knowing how to play. I feel like the

Queen's Gambit's probably doing a lot of that to people, especially with quarantine. A lot of people picking up chess right now. Yeah. But that's not what this podcast is about we're talking about checkers yeah yeah and we're talking about the the queen's checkers my idea for a show everyone's gonna love they're gonna be way queen's gambit came out and you're like oh no my spec script about checkers. No. No. But let's get into things that are interesting about it. And on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And that is in a segment called, Stats don't want to wait for the show to be over. I want to know numbers right now.

Oh, please. Very good. I was looking forward to that, and it did not disappoint. Well, thank you. Yeah. And that name was submitted by Damon McGuire. We have a new name every week. Make them silly and wacky.

Submit to SifPod on Twitter or to SifPod at gmail.com. Thank you, Damon. That was fun. Yeah. Yeah, yeah yeah that was great yeah from the classic dawson stats yeah dawson stats oh yeah that's the follow-up when they're in college and then dawson becomes a statistics major yeah and they start taking statistics yeah yeah he gives up writing there's worse reboot ideas coming out now so that sounds great to me yes well we gotta we got numbers of stats here the first number is two because i did not know this but maybe british listeners did two is the number of main names for the game checkers in English. One of them is checkers. And then in British English, this game is called Drafts. And that's spelled D-R-A-U-G-H-T-S.

Of course it is. Which I Americanly read as draughts, but it's pronounced drafts. Yeah, I'm just surprised it wasn't something like Bobby's and Dodgers. No, when you said it was a British name, i was hoping like a lot of british nicknames for stuff are like really cutesy and i was hoping it would be like red sea black seas or something cuter than that but uh yeah they can come up with the bangers and mash drafts is the best they got. Come on. Yeah. Is there a reason why it's called that?

Or that's just one of those unknown weird Britishisms? Yeah, I actually didn't find one. If people know it, write in. Yeah, I think it's just one of those British nouns that's completely different than ours for no apparent reason. Yeah. Weirdos. Yeah, they're a bad country is the point. But Joe weirdos.

That's what we're trying to get at. That's what we've come here to say on this podcast about checkers. That's the main takeaway. We're still bitter about the whole revolution and taxation and everything. America's oldest enemy. War of 1812 Don't get me started USA

Next number here is 12 because that's the number of pieces each player gets in checkers or English drafts if you want to call it that. It's also an 8x8 board just like chess and you only use half the squares. But each have 12 pieces. Okay.

That checks out to me. Standard checkers. I'm going to guess that you're going to get into Chinese checkers and stuff like that, but that's the standard, the one that we all grew up with. Yeah, I remember that Chinese checkers. It popped in my head the other day, before you even told us what the topic was. It popped in my head and I was for no reason at all. And I was like, how did I play that game?

Oh, wow. I could not remember. I spent like 30 minutes trying to remember how to play Chinese checkers before I gave up and did not Google it. You mean, Bridget, you mean how did you play, like, what are the rules? Not like, how did you come across this game? Yeah, what are the rules? Yeah, because I remember having a board and playing a lot

because I liked the little balls. Those were fun, and it was more colorful. But yeah, I spent like 30 minutes racking my brain trying to remember how to play Chinese checkers, and I could not. Yeah, and we will talk about its origin i'm also i know we didn't own it but i'm pretty sure i like knew kids who owned it and a lot of times you do something at somebody else's house and you're like man i wish i had golden eye friend

64 or whatever it is right i hadn't i had no urge to get chinese checkers at all i was like this is fine i don't know know. Yeah. Not for me. Didn't need to escalate checkers into a four-player game. Yeah. That one you can do up to six, right? That's like crazy. Oh, yeah. Even more than Xbox or PS4.

You know, we've talked about it a bit. Let's talk about Chinese checkers specifically, because there is a game. I sent you guys a picture. It's called Halma. Right. The name Halma is the Greek word for jump. But Halma is an American board game that was invented in 1883 by a man named George Howard Monks.

And it's a square board, but it's basically Chinese checkers piece is Chinese checkers rules. That's how the game works. It's just like a piece can move one square or it can jump a piece. Nothing gets taken off the board and you're just trying to get all your guys across. It's the same rules. Yeah. He invents this in 1883. He's an American.

And then in 1892, a German company called Ravensburger, which I know is like a puzzle company. The Ravensburger people put out a game called Sternhalma. And then Stern is the German word for star. So the name just means like star jumping. Oh, okay. And they do, oh, this is a six player game, six pointed star. And then in 1928, an American board game company starts marketing Sternholm in the U.S. as Hop Ching Checkers. And then other companies just start calling it Chinese Checkers.

It's as racist as you think it is. Yeah. Chinese Checkers is it's all American and German people, I think, making it. It has nothing to do with the whole country of China at all. What I'm afraid to ask why they started calling it chinese checkers it seems like it's just they thought there was a marketing angle yeah and then they could like get people to it's like it's it's all the bad reasons there's nothing good about it yeah yeah it's the weird orientalism kind of stuff that we're going through. Yeah. Right.

Made it seem more interesting. It's exotic, I guess, because there's six instead of two. Right. And it's just like a checkers free-for-all from what I would guess looking at this. Yeah. I can play now. I remember. All right.

I go to the park. Go back to those pickup games. Chinese checkers. Pickup games of Chinese checkers. Just in games of Chinese checkers just in the park. Yeah. In the park, yeah. Instead of basketball, people are waiting on the Chinese checkers board. Lined up.

Like just loose people looking for groups of five. Like, oh, where's a group of five? Where's a group of five? Let's go to another number here. This is the big number in terms of size. Five times 10 to the 20th power. So that's five with 20 zeros after it. That is, and I don't totally understand this,

but that is what I am told is the amount of possible positions approximately in a game of regular checkers. That's according to computer scientists at the University of Alberta. They wrote a paper in the journal Science in 2007 and said that there are roughly 500 billion billion possible positions in a game of checkers. Yeah. There seems like there's a lot of like people that are math scientists that are just doing stuff with solitaire and like checkers. And I'm going to find out something, some other weird game is going to have billions and trillions of possibilities to solving it. Like, why is that?

Why you get a math degree? Like, cause I feel like, well, what else are they using it for i guess probably economics yeah economics getting rockets to space and checkers that's the big three yeah if you're not interested in other any three of those you can be like me and just stop doing math after high school exactly maybe it's just because i would play i guess my older brother a lot and uh he would beat me i would like i kind of felt like checkers was uh almost a rig setup in that like there were only so like i i felt like every game i played ended in the same couple ways and maybe that's me being bad at it as a seven-year-old it seemed very finite to me

yeah the game i yeah i was wrong and i was just bad it turns out i was bad at checkers you weren't developing checkers strategies at seven years old no it's uh i saw that and i was like no and i'm not if this is where I'm at at checkers, I'm not ready for chess. And then didn't learn it for another. No, that's fair. And then waited almost 15 years to learn. More than that. However

old I am. I do get that with like any and I feel like two player games are afflicted with this a lot. Like both checkers and chess are just games where no matter how much you like the other person you're just trying to destroy them completely at all times right like it's a really so it's not like super fun to continue learning when you're not very good at it because you just get wrecked yeah no matter what it yeah it gets frustrating very quickly yeah yeah i think any yeah any two-player game it's just

back and forth and you're just get if you're bad at it and you're a younger sibling let's just say you're just sitting there getting more and more frustrated yeah i feel like at that point you might as you're like no i just play go fish or like war something where i have a random chance of winning at least yeah like somebody's skill level is that much above yours. Even in Risk or something, it's like, well, I lost, but I was briefly a king. That was pretty cool. I had a lot of land.

That was fun. At least those pieces are fun, I guess. There's guys and little cannons. There's a story. It's some sort of arc i can tell myself yeah and also and with the the checkers possibilities i still don't totally understand how this number is so big exactly but yeah two things i think are contributing are one is that once a piece becomes a king and it can go backwards i feel like that really opens up the possible eventual combinations. Yes. I forgot about that.

Yeah. And even then, the other thing, if people heard the random numbers episode of the show, Jason found an unfathomably large number for the possible arrangements of a deck of cards. And then in this article, the computer scientist Jonathan Schaefer says, quote, the possible number of chess games is so huge that no one will invest the effort to calculate the exact number. And this guy calculated all of the checkers games. And he said chess is unfathomable. Like I think I think the random potentials of these games are just extreme, no matter what they are. Yeah. Yeah. I like that even a mathematician was like, nah, too big.

Yeah. Yeah. You got to figure it's like from number, there's from two pieces to what, 24 in checkers? Yeah. And then in chess, it's from, you can have from two pieces to, I guess that's like 32 pieces.

And then all of those pieces in chess move different ways. So you have to figure that yeah that's i understand why it's an insanely big number and like you said yeah it's not worth it what are we right sorry chess checkers pieces move one way so like that i feel like that the math the equation is a lot easier when you have to start breaking down chess, you start realizing what you have to do. And you're like, no, it's not. No one actually wants to know this. Sorry, chess.

This is just a fact. Someone is going to say it at a party and maybe it gets repeated. But I'll go back to quantifying how big planets are or something. If you wanted to know how many ways how many ways there were then you should have been less complicated chess that's all we're saying yeah i love that idea of a of a scientist just stopping and being like what am i doing it's really fun to me yeah this is pointless yeah The board game scientist. He just sees a rocket go off in the distance like,

yeah, no, I'm not doing this. No, not today. A couple more numbers here. One of them is 3,600 years. 3,600 years. That is at least how long people have been playing checkers type games. According to like the archaeological record, Smithsonian says there's evidence of it back in 1,600 BC. There have also been excavations at the city of Thebes in Egypt. They found a wall painting showing the pharaoh ramses the third playing an early form of checkers with a lady so that's pretty cool yeah yeah that's pretty right that's really cool the longevity of checkers that's impressive but that makes it because it's such a simple game yeah that it feels like yeah we oh we're bored there's not. I don't have anything else to look at right now.

Let's play some checkers. Because that was very much like my image of checkers. It's like, it's raining outside and we're not going to get into a whole game of Monopoly because that's going to end in something breaking. Yeah. Let's play checkers. Yeah. And, and you know they probably

had uh rainy days and thieves where very rarely but yeah for sure on occasion there was a rainy day in thieves and uh they needed something to do and this seems like an yeah it seems like a kind of intuitive game to make up yeah yeah because they're also definitely playing something like our checkers like the rules vary a little bit across antiquity and cultures and stuff but it's it's some kind of thingies jumping thingies on a board game yeah that's that's been a thing i guess as long as we've been able to like stack up some pebbles and and do it yeah and like you said the pharaoh didn't want to be busting out the monopolyopoly. People getting angry, smashing pottery. That's not something you want to get into.

And also, he's a Pharaoh. Of course he's going to win. Yeah. He plays that game, real life stakes. He's winning. He opens the Monopoly board like, and you all start in jail and you stay there. And I go around the board. Yeah, and you build these hotels for me no no no you don't get extra money for the hotels i get extra money for all the hotels

but yeah i just imagined like you put four little sphinxes and then it's a pyramid i don't know i'm just thinking of like egypt monopoly bits now. That's stupid. That would have made it more fun. Yeah, I'm sure Hasbro probably has that version of Monopoly somewhere. Oh, yeah. Monopoly checkers. We'll like link it and get Amazon credit or something. Yeah, of course.

That definitely exists. One more number here and that takes us into takeaway number one. There's two takeaways on this episode, but the last number is 30 pieces and 144 squares. 30 pieces and 144 squares is the number of pieces and board squares in Canadian checkers. And that takes us into takeaway number one. checkers and that takes us into takeaway number one the rest of the world has its own amazing versions of the game checkers there's there's a whole bunch of them we won't cover all of them but we'll get uh like three main ones there's some other ones that are really cool really neat i i feel like as we find out what these are we're gonna realize to realize America's is the dumbest. It's just the most stripped down, like, yeah, just move the pieces.

If you make it to the end, I don't know, go backwards. You know what? I see this Canadian checkers board, and that's too many pieces. You know what? That's too much. I'm good with American checkers. Good for me. Yeah, well, people can look at the picture.

It's basically an American checkerboard. It's just bigger. It's 12 by 12 instead of 8 by 8. There are a lot more pieces. There's a great GitHub page with a bunch of drafts info, they call it. And they say that it was invented by French settlers in Quebec. And apparently it's still most popular in Quebec and among like francophone communities. It's just this huge checkers game. And I guess maybe it's the

most exciting to me because it's bigger than what I'm used to. But it's just like that much more complicated. Yeah, it's just super checkers. Yeah. Yeah. Because also you're, you're not left with a lot of places to move yeah you're closed in almost immediately the other thing is there are a couple extra rules so um and this is also a variation on a game called international checkers which is the same but 10 by 10 board a little bit smaller uh and in between the two we're talking about but either way these are the extra rules one is that a regular piece can capture backwards so it can't move backwards but it can capture backwards if that's an option yeah whole new wrinkle right

that's cool that's cool that is a cool rule and then and then the other thing the kings are what is called flying kings and a flying king can move as many squares as they want to diagonally to make a capture. And they can also stop on any empty square they want to. So they can stop past the thing they captured. Oh, okay. I don't know how I feel about that rule. That feels like cheating. Yeah, that's too much power for the king.

That's a lot. That's a lot you're able to do. Right. That's even more than in chess. No, sorry, too much power for the king. That's a lot. That's a lot you're able to do. Right. That's even more than in chess. Like that's no, sorry, too much. Yeah. It's way better than a chess king. A chess king is like a fool.

Right, can barely do anything. Yeah. How is this the most important one? Get out of here. Yeah. One space at a time. I also, I mean, i don't know if you're planning on getting into this but in this picture there's it looks like there are stickers for like

the blue pieces to be florida lees and then like the maple leaf for canada i like they're setting up like a war here i felt the same way about that picture. Yeah. It really seemed like a French versus English inter-Canada feud kind of thing. Yeah. It feels like they're making it combative. They're adding the story element that I wanted. Now we got a game. Now we got a game. Like I sit down to play Canadian Checkers with bridget and you like put on military

music when we send like okay what's going on what's happening here yeah all right no i yeah i need it to be couched in historical uh struggle before i play my board games did i mention the rule of everyone has to wear big hats like Napoleon? That's one of the rules. It's just in the game. It's part of the game. Moving to, I guess, Napoleon's opponent. There's another thing here called Russian drafts,

which is the Russian version of checkers. And there's a few differences here. It's like basic Russian drafts is pretty similar, except that if you like jump your piece to become a king it can continue capturing backwards if that's available so like as soon as you get kinged you can start killing on that same move oh which is pretty cool that's brutal yeah yeah and then also those are flying kings in that game as well i think a lot of countries are in this flying king thing. Yeah.

That's a lot. That seems unfair. You just have this wrecking ball going through the board? This all-powerful wrecking ball that can just do whatever he wants? I like narrowing the board so you have fewer places to go and more jumps. You have to clear space on the board to play efficiently. You have to make some strategic sacrifices. But this Flying King seems to just take away all strategy

when you have one piece that can move anywhere it wants. These were rules that were definitely invented during a harsh winter. We got to spice this game up. Flying Kings. Yeah, this is a a this goes back to my younger sibling this is a younger sibling rule a rule that was made for yeah someone who kept losing and they're like fine you get this one piece a special piece and it can go anywhere you want that is exactly what i would have said to my younger brother so yeah you're right yeah it was definitely someone was losing a lot and they had to

somehow even the playing field with this almighty piece I'm remembering that when I was a kid and we played Monopoly we were allowed to go ahead and build houses and hotels without owning the whole color group and then later i sat down to play monopoly with other people as as like i think late teens or something and i like bought one property and was like and three houses please and they were like what are you doing that's not how it works there are so many rules like that where you just like child's board games you're just like you've just made it up because your parents were like it's gonna be too hard if you someone's gonna cry so we just gotta like let this yeah sometime before the pandemic last time i saw my family we we played monopoly we're like let's read the rules

and see if we can now that we're all like grown adults and we're reading these rules and we're like no that's stupid we're not gonna do that no we're gonna play the same way we always play yeah of course yeah and it is like i feel like there's this ancient thing everyone invented in parallel of just pieces jumping pieces on a board and then every group came up with house rules it's awesome like that like yeah i do yeah it's so cool well because that's the that's the main event of checkers that's the fun part yeah it's jumping double jumps those are there's that's a very satisfying movement so i think i was like we want to do this yeah but more when um there's also there's a couple interesting variations of the Russian drafts.

And one of them is called Podavki. And Podavki is the Russian word for giveaway. And so it's the same game, but you are trying to run out of pieces first. Oh. Like you win the game by running out of possible moves, which can mean all your stuff's blocked, but usually means you're out of pieces yeah so it's it's an interesting way to think about it yeah that is really interesting yeah it's a very scorched earth checkers fleeing from the napoleonic army in winter kind of a thing i get it yeah makes sense

that's yeah i guess that's because it's I mean that's almost like checkmating in chess where you're just stuck but you're trying to checkmate get yourself into a checkmate you can't beat me I've checkmated myself yeah I'm in my room and that's how that's how you win i locked the door and i'm not coming out so that's that also a very younger sibling thing to do like i kept losing so now no you didn't beat me i beat myself so i won the game yet so you yeah you just try to block yourself in do you try to block yourself in so that the player can't take away your king or do you try to lock yourself in so i mean i guess they would never have to take your king yeah the best i the best i can figure out is like

because in researching this i also realized i only learned how the pieces of checkers move and never tried to think about the strategy ever but a lot of the strategy in checkers is like trying to trap your opponent like have their guys go too far forward and then you take them all you know and so in podavki you're trying to lose your pieces you're basically trying to push all your guys forward i think in a way where you lose them all really fast. But they're trying to do that too. And so it's hard. Yeah. Okay. That's interesting.

So it was the wrong reference. It's actually the Stalingrad version of checkers, not the Napoleonic Army version of checkers. That's one for the history nerds. Gotcha. I love that they're like, you know, we had a pretty hard time in history, but it led to this other version of checkers. So pretty good. So it was all worth it.

Pretty good to be Russian. Works out. The other variation here is kind of mind-bending. It's called Bosny. And so Bosny is a lot like U.S. checkers. It's the little variants. And so Bosny is a lot like US checkers. It's the little variants of Russian checkers. And then what happens is when you capture a piece,

you stack the piece under your piece instead of taking it off the board. And then pieces keep stacking under pieces in a way where they build into towers on the board. That seems unwieldy. So do you just win by having the most towers or the tallest towers? How do you win that game? And so then the other thing is when you start getting towers on the board, when a tower gets captured, it only loses its top piece.

And you also organize the pieces. So basically, it's a thing where if if you have a tower going you probably have a bunch of the other sides pieces under it but if they take your guys off the top then once they're the top piece it flips and it's their piece does that make sense i feel like that's kind of confusing but it kind of makes sense yeah yeah it does so stacking doesn't give you any extra offensive powers, but it helps you defensively. Yeah, you're removing them, but they're still under you, and then you win by having all the top pieces, basically.

And they're also normal kings. So it's kind of like checkers, but nothing is removed, and the game can flip over pretty fast if they take back your tower. Right. It's unwieldy checkers because I imagine moving those pieces is a nightmare. I have very shaky hands and I don't think I could play that. It would be a mess.

Everything would be knocked over. This game is not for people who have tremors. Other 90-year-old women like myself. I never thought of it as secretly Jenga. If you blow it up and no one wants to keep playing, then you've lost. I would be just dropping pieces left and right, and it would just not be...

I'd have to remember how tall the tower, it just doesn't seem. It's too hard. Physically too challenging. Yeah. Not feasible. Physically too taxing checkers for me. Yeah, this is checkers.

It's not supposed to be like a dexterity check. I don't know what's going on here. And then one more amazing version of checkers here this is called da math and da math is a game in the philippines uh i sent you guys just the board and then also the board with the pieces on it because it's basically exactly the rules of american checkers but it is also an educational tool for teaching math to kids. That's adorable. Because they came up with it. I know.

I wish I had played it as a kid. Now I want to. I know. I would have. To be honest, math was not a strong suit of mine. And I think when I first saw this, I had the reaction of like, oh, no, no. This isn't going to be for me. As soon as you see that division sign it's like oh

no i saw negative numbers yeah i saw negative numbers in division and i was like oh boy i'm glad i didn't have this because this would have been a real problem for me what if the rest of the podcast i just make you guys do a quiz or some terrible like school like trying to remember the quadratic formula that's a square B plus mine I don't know all right yeah I immediately got nervous when I saw this because I'm both very competitive and very bad at math so it sent me into a spiral. And this game, it seems like it's really only played in the Philippines. All the sources are going to be the Philippine Star and other Philippine media. But in 1975, a student named Emilio Hina Jr. submitted a class project called Dama de Numero. Because Dama is what the standard Philippine checkers variant was called,

and Numero is math. And he and his teacher, Jesus Huenda, built it into a playable game, and now it's popular nationwide in the Philippines. Mr. Huenda won the 1981 Philippine Presidential Medal of Merit. Oh, wow. It's a huge thing in teaching math in the philippines it's just checkers with like numbers and uh basic math signs attached to it oh that's cool that's awesome that's super creative yeah uh i when you said it was called the math i was like i i kind of hoped

it was a america thing where we just named it the math yeah where it's like a very clever good game and what what do we call it and then all the cleverness yeah went out the way i don't know we just named it the math. Yeah. It's like a very clever, good game. And what, what do we call it? And then all the cleverness went out the window. I don't know the math. It's like the bears. Yeah. Somebody from Chicago was changing checkers.

Dot math. I came up with the whole board game. You want me to come up with a clever name too? I already did all this math. It's called duh math. In Chicago, where I'm from, we play deep dish checkers, or as we call it, duh math. It's a game that looks like a soup, but it is actually checkers. Really fat checkers when we'll uh we'll have links for people on how to play if they want to basically the

pieces have numbers on them 0 through 11 and then the squares have plus minus multiplication division and so the number on your piece lands on a sign when it jumps something and so then you do the number on your piece sign number on their piece and then you get a number and so you really win by getting the mode the highest numbers out of these moves rather than like killing all the pieces oh so okay yeah yeah so yeah it becomes a scoring game yeah you can you can easily win and lose all your pieces really fast if you just do it right. Do the right exchanges. Yeah.

I really like the mechanics of this game because also if you jump a piece and then it's a minus sign, you kind of just, yeah, that's, you's yeah you lost yourself points right or division could be pretty brutal you know yeah yeah right yeah that's true off of that we are going to a short break followed by a whole new takeaway I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam.

All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory.

The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. But and we have one more takeaway to go. It's a big story, i think here we go takeaway number two checkers is a solved game and the way it got solved should be a movie

obviously that's partly my opinion okay but uh have you guys ever heard of a solved game do you know do you know like in general what that is no i would guess that it means that there is like a specific strategy that you can enact that's going to get you the victory no matter what yeah kind of like with tic-tac-toe where there's a specific strategy right there's an algorithm more or less is that exactly okay yeah that's exactly right and tic-tac-tooe is the perfect example of one that... We'll have a link to an XKCD cartoon that lays it out in a fun way, but there's just a game tree you can follow in Tic-Tac-Toe, and you'll play as best as you possibly can if you do that set of instructions. And in 2007, a team of computer scientists at the University of Alberta published

a scientific paper in the journal science it was titled checkers is solved that's the whole title uh because they solved checkers they just figured it out with computers they figured out an exactly optimal strategy where it will be a draw every time if both players do it again these are mathematicians not writers that's why it's checkers is solved was the title yeah i mean the the math behind that had to be pretty complicated because as like one of the numbers before was whatever crazy amount of possibility is five to the 20th power yeah yeah move is available so yeah that to solve that, smart people, smart computers. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's the kind of thing where I guess there are all those options, and then also if both people do the best thing they can, they both have all the information, they both are within a pretty limited set of rules, and just you can defensively work it out pretty simply where the options are so limited that it's a draw every time there's also a thing that was like a long time coming at even pre-computers we'll link people to a radio lab episode from back in 2011 that is mostly about chess being

amazing the whole show is about like oh chess is full of possibilities uh like like queen's gambit fans you're gonna love it but yeah there's one story they start with as a contrast which is the 1863 world championship of checkers so like during the u.s civil war 1863 there are two players named robert martins and james wiley playing for the championship they play 40 games of checkers all 40 are a draw and all 40 start with the same set of moves and it's a crisis in the checkers community because that's kind of it i guess right like we did the game i guess okay yeah we set up a championship tournament for checkers was that the first and last championship of checkers yeah and so there's like i don't know much about competitive chess and that i knew nothing about checkers before this but yeah it turns out that after that or you know they probably tried a few more years of the same way but after that they decided that in order to continue having competitive checkers at all

they needed to build in randomness and again people have heard random numbers episode you know there's randomness kind of made up but but the big source for this whole takeaway is a story in the atlantic it's called how checkers was solved by alexis c madrigal but here's his description of tournament checkers now quote at the levels, checkers is a game of mental attrition. Most games are draws. In serious matches, players don't begin with the standard initial starting position. Instead, a three-move opening is drawn from a stack of approved beginnings, which gives some tiny advantage to one player or the other and then they play that out and then switch colors. So they don't start from a normal board.

They start from somebody moved a few pieces for both of us and now we play. When you said it's a game of mental attrition, I just imagine two people there smoking coffee harried after 48 hours straight of playing checkers against each other yeah like thinking about every move who's going to break first yeah kind of yeah so they added like a deck of cards to checkers to make it more random yeah they found out that if it starts from just the start and i guess there's something called play as you go checkers which is competitive

checkers where you do just start from the start but they figured out that in most cases if you just start with a normal board it's a draw uh and even even with the randomness they're putting in it's still usually a draw but that's like what it takes to make the sport like playable at all yeah right is competitive checker still a thing it can't be that's a perfect question because then uh we get into the story here the story of checkers getting solved that i think should be a movie is that in the 1990s the uh team which is really mainly one person that ends up solving checkers starts collaborating with probably the greatest checkers player who's ever lived who just utterly dominated competitive checkers for a couple decades

amazing and they work together to solve it like more or less working together they did it uh jointly they moneyballed checkers yeah the end and that's the pitch bridget you got it got no one they recruited several men with big bats and then you win the game because the other team is pretty afraid yeah like you said it's a game of mental mental intimidation in this case yeah it's like han solo playing or c3p playing against chewbacca like that's that's the strategy that's how you win checkers every time i do feel like that's really fun there was like a whole league of competitive checkers and they're like well turns out we just figured out the whole game. So we're going to quit now. Like, I like that idea in professional sports.

Like, oh, we just figured out how to win basketball every single time. So no more need for the NBA. Let's pack it up. I mean, they're trying to do that. That's what analytics is in the NBA. They're trying to do that. Yeah, right. Exactly.

If you just have a LeBron James, you'll get to the finals every time. Yeah. He's like, he's the flying king of uh you know what that's just as good a nickname as he's ever had that flying king yes absolutely that's actually kind of perfect yeah um how do we trademark this rapidly uh he'll he'll he'll play the Checkers, the champion Checker person in our movie. Yeah, we... That's what Space Jam 2 is.

Well, I sent you guys a picture of the Checkers champion if you want to see him. His name is Marion Tinsley. So I'm really enjoying LeBron playing a man named Marion Tinsley, just on its own. I do like that. That's great. Like for context here, in 1996, we'll start having the matches of chess between Gary Kasparov and the computer Deep Blue. A few years ago, they built a computer to play the game Go that faced off against champions. But

before that, we had this man, Marion Tinsley, who basically ran out of humans to play checkers against. He was just too good at the game. He was born in 1927. And then from 1950 to 1990, this is how Alexis C. Madrigal describes him, quote, from 1950 to 1990, Tinsley was the world champion of checkers whenever he wanted to be. He became the world champ, won all of the time, took a 15 year break to focus on teaching math and on preaching, and then like came back later because he wanted to try again like he like no one beat this guy for a whole chunk of the 20th century wow at checkers yeah you sold me alex that's this is a movie i want to see now yeah that's because i mean you talked about strategy and checkers and it feels like it can't be that complicated. Yeah. Whatever strategy there is. But clearly it is. If there's a master checker player,

there's a grandmaster of checkers. There's clearly a lot more to it than I can fathom. Yeah, yeah. Especially because these tournaments, it'll be game after game after game, especially because so many of them are draws. And apparently in his entire life, Marion Tinsley lost five games to a

human in public ever that's incredible and no one twice and and just never had like a true opponent in his entire run of doing it so he's literally like a computer like one person used a strategy he hadn't seen before and beat him and then he never lost to that person's like what are you doing like he's yeah it just goes by like old men in central park and it's like that's oh man and as far as being like a computer, he's even sort of personally a computer. He was interviewed in 1993 by the Philadelphia Inquirer, and he described himself as an introvert who, quote, felt unloved by his parents. and spelling bees and then quote and as a twig is bent it grows as i grew up i still kept feeling that way end quote and he proceeded to go to college at age 15 discover checkers in college and spend eight hour days every day for the rest of his life playing checkers he never married he said quote i haven't seen a checker marriage that worked out. It is a very rare woman who can be married to a real student of checkers.

And when they visited him at his house, he had like nothing on the walls and just a room upstairs with all of his checkers stuff. And then like one giant recliner that he would rest in. And that was kind of it. Bachelor pad. Like he just does checkers. That's all he does. wow yeah and he was also a math teacher and a man of deep faith who was a minister and the disciples of christ protestant

church like he had other things he did i shouldn't reduce it but but he yeah was was kind of a checkers computer a lot of the time yeah that's interesting and like adds up to a lot of like the people who are great at things they're like yeah it's interesting and like adds up to a lot of like the people who are great at things they're like yeah it's yeah yeah this is my thing that's all they thought about yeah i mean and like we said lebron with basketball that's i mean he has his whole life but like he has a family and he does a production company but basketball is his thing that's like the thing that he's found yeah and again i'm i'm certainly no mathematician i just can't wrap my head around checkers going that deep just the standard american checkers you know

that you can really be a student i didn't know like i can't really figure out what there is to learn yeah well bridget maybe if you'd done more math in school then you would be more fascinated by checkers i i guess so there's something that's not connecting but i mean clearly i'm in the wrong so i'll concede what it math is a thing but also i part of why i was excited to have both of you for this is because you're both sports fans yeah i remember i remember i was in high school and we had like an independent study project in a class where we just needed to do a biography of a person and i did babe ruth yeah another kid in the class that i was like oh questions after the presentation and another kid in the class was like

isn't he just a guy who hits a ball with a stick like isn't that like and that's me with checkers i'm like isn't that just yeah you stack stuff move diagonal that's it like that's not interesting but it is that that is a really good point uh just gotta find your thing like that that's your thing and that's your thing yeah yeah i guess yeah you can go as deep uh any subject can be as deep as you want it to be except that checkers itself so yeah like at least he's doing checkers and isn't like doing something horrible with the economy with his math skills like yeah this is pretty benign like hooray that he did he found checkers and isn't like destroying the world economy. Yeah, sure, yeah. Right, like try to acquire kryptonite

so Superman can be defeated at last. Like yeah, if he tried, probably. Yeah, it seems like these powers, his checkers powers could be used elsewhere. I think that's what's baffling me, but if that's the thing he was great at, it's the thing he was great at. You can use powers for good, evil, or just for checkers, you know.

Or for checkers. I think that's what's like baffling about the student. It's like, you just stopped at checkers, huh? Checkers really feels like a stepping stone to other games and strategy kind of thinking. And this also, this might be a good time. There's a few quotes from him about how he feels about it, about the game. Tinsley, quote, Checkers is a deep, simple, elegant game. He also once said that playing another human great was, quote, like two artists collaborating on a work of art. And then apparently his most quotable line

among like the Checkers community is, quote quote chess is like looking out over a vast open ocean checkers is like looking into a bottomless well i don't understand that but that's how he feels so that's nice okay no but yeah i i'm glad to have some insight yeah uh yeah you know he found what he loved he was great at it good for him yeah yeah well and then the the other i really like this story because i feel like the stories of chess players against computers go players against computers it's like a it's like a battle to keep humanity right on top or something it's like really dire and this is a story of him like meeting his buddy a checkers computer because this is uh the other

person in the story is named jonathan schaefer who's the author of that paper in 2007 and like the guy i quoted for the the five times ten to the 20th power and everything and he was born in 1957 in toronto as a computer scientist loves games and the first project he tried to do was to build a chess computer, and then other people were building the chess computer Deep Blue already. And so he felt like, oh, it's too late. And then according to Alexis C. Madrigal, quote, a colleague suggested that perhaps Schaefer should try checkers,

and thrillingly, with just a few months of work, his software was good enough to bring to the Computer Olympiad in London and compete against other checkers playing computers started with chess then he had i'll hit that was taken so he scaled back a little bit and now he's got yeah you got something yeah and so he builds a he's a computer scientist at the university of alberta and builds a computer. At first they called it the Beast, and then they eventually named it Chinook after the warm winds that sometimes blow through Alberta. Of course, we're saying the wind is named

after Pacific Northwest First Nations peoples, the Chinook. But Schaefer just spends as much time as possible refining this computer, and then also in competition he heard about Marion Tinsley, because he was really starting to learn about checkers as he built aining this computer. And then also in competition, he heard about Marion Tinsley because he was like really starting to learn about checkers as he built a checkers computer. And he became pretty obsessive. Schaefer in his book said, quote, sometimes when I had difficulty getting to sleep, I would fantasize about the exhilaration that I would experience when Chinook finally defeated

the terrible Tinsley. And then he also says that his wife would interrupt his reveries asking, you're thinking about him again, aren't you? It's so dramatic. There's a story there of this guy versus Marion Tinsley, the big bad. Just him staring out the window. Yeah. And then we have a couple,

there's basically three big competitions they're in. And the first one is that in late 1990, the American Checker Federation allowed Chinook to play in the US Championships against humans and quote, the software went undefeated and played Tinsley to a draw six times wow that earned the software the right to challenge tinsley for the world championship all right like i think of this like computer versus player thing is such a like aggressive battle but the next thing that

happens is tinsley reaches out to schaefer and says like can i come to canada and hang out with your computer and like play checkers i would really really enjoy that. Like, let's just do it for fun. Like he finally had somebody to play. Yeah. I like that it has a happy ending. Yeah, that's good. He made a friend. Yeah.

The computer was his friend, not the guy that made the computer, but you know. Not the guy. But yeah yeah he finally had someone to play his games with that feels like me asking to go over to a friend's house who had like an n64 before i did it's like yeah we're gonna go play mario right it's a one-player game but that's fine yeah i'm coming to see you, not Mario. And then this article, it describes Tinsley, who is American and lives in Florida, but he goes up to Edmonton in 1991. And I guess at the time Chinook was programmed where it could see 16 or

17 moves ahead. And like a human or a computer playing checkers or chess it's all about how far ahead you can think basically and how far ahead you can figure out stuff yeah as uh tinsley was playing against chinook apparently chinook makes a move and tinsley immediately says out loud you're gonna regret that the game continues tinsley. And then Schaefer runs the numbers and finds out that not only was Tinsley going to win no matter what after that move, but for Tinsley to know that he needed to see 64 moves ahead. Oh, my God. That's insane. 64 moves ahead. Yeah.

Yeah. That is crazy. That is like's that is crazy. That's like that is like to go to basketball. That's like somebody getting the tip off like Steph Curry catches it. And then LeBron James just sees like, OK, I'm going to make a three pointer at the end of the second quarter now. Like, that's insane. I'm still like trying to wrap my head around how checkers can go so deep like this the well the endless well that he's saying yeah 64 moves ahead yeah that's crazy

it's somehow people can just i mean i i'm sure if i actually played someone get at it i would lose every game and start to see how it works. But I think I've only ever played with people who also only learned how the pieces work. And we were just fooling around. Like we never tried. Yeah, it's not a big enough community that that information has like slipped in. But clearly I'm wrong, so.

Yeah, so Chinook ends up getting two shots at Tinsley for the world championship like a boxer or something yeah and the first shot is in 1992 it's the first ever man machine world championship of checkers tinsley apparently did a lot of press and in one interview he said quote i can win i have a better programmer than chinook. His was Jonathan. Mine is the Lord, which is awesome. That's some good stuff to say. I love it. That's some good trash talk.

I imagine that somebody could say that in the UFC or in WWE before a match. They would get cheered for that. That's pretty good. Yeah, it rules. Yeah. And then, yeah, there's nothing you can say back to that. You're just like, uh-huh. And yeah, sure, I respect nothing you can say back to that. You're just like, uh-huh. And I, sure, I respect that.

But that's the thing. Chinook didn't care. Chinook is emotionless. It's a robot. Your trash talk means nothing, Tinsley. Right. And he seems like just a nice church man. So you're just like, uh-huh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Like, he means it. He's not just invoking God for no reason. He's very devout. Yeah, yeah. Like he means that he's not like just invoking God for no reason. He's very devout. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's just like a very nice church-going man. And you're just like, yeah, sure, buddy. Yeah.

And I bet you can't beat him. Linda. And so then they start playing. And it's still this thing where most of the games are draws. And you're just waiting for a game with a mistake where somebody breaks through. Tinsley gets a win in game five. And then Chinook gets a win in game eight. And everyone's shocked because this is the sixth time Tinsley has lost a game in 40 years.

Wild. And then game 16, Chinook wins and becomes the first thing to beat Tinsley twice in the entire world. Alexis Madrigal writing about it, quote, Then, in an episode that Schaefer still finds too painful to describe, Chinook had some sort of error which forced them to resign the game, tying the match up. Schaefer said, Tinsley viewed it as God helping him out. It was a religious experience for Tinsley, and one of the most devastating experiences of my entire life.

Oh my gosh. Wow. I'm comparing this to so many movies like there this is like rocky chess and at the same time there's like a uh finding bobby fisher yeah boxing and chess basically yeah uh this is it yeah yeah and then uh and so then it's tied at two wins and then tinsley gets a third win and wins the championship ret retains his belt. For humanity. For humanity. Take that, computers. That's cool. I do hope it's a belt.

I do hope it's like a world. A wrestling belt that he gets. That would be great. Yeah, I think that's what checkers is mincing is like a Vince McMahon to really promote this thing yeah it's

missing the theater of wrestling get some fireworks in there we'll be great yeah squirt steroids into little pieces like it's not gonna work oh man Trying to squirt steroids into little pieces. Like, what the hell? It's not going to work. Oh, man.

But then after this 92 match, Tinsley is talking to CNN, because I guess CNN covered it. And he says, quote, I think if I can keep my health, I don't believe there will ever be a computer that can beat me. And then cut to the other matchup in 1994. Schaefer has been like still tinkering and rebuilding the computer the whole two years in the run up to this. And then Alexis Madrigal says that the night before the match, Tinsley dreamt that God spoke to him and said, I like Jonathan too, which had led Tinsley to believe that he might have lost exclusive divine backing.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then they start playing the first six games or draws, and then Tinsley asks to leave because he has been having a terrible stomach ache, and it's particularly acute, and just not going to draw it out.

It turns out he has pancreatic cancer. Oh, my gosh. And he dies seven months later. Oh. Whoa. Wow. And also Chinook is technically the world champion because Tinsley technically resigns.

But Schaefer's very frustrated by this because that's not like a real win. It was all draws, and then they stopped. That was all that happened. Yeah, to be the champ, you got to beat the the champ and chinook didn't do it yeah wow what a yeah what a note like a a draw of an item truly and i assume there's no one who's been you know as great as tinsley yeah chinook has never had a another worthy opponent yeah and that's the the thing like

Chinook basically hasn't been used to play anybody else but Schaefer took that tack and for one thing like Schaefer drove Tinsley to the hospital in that situation when he when he had to leave and like they were very nice to each other the whole time but yeah Schaefer was very sad because he wanted to actually win so he decided this is magical describing it quote with Tinsley gone the only way to prove that chinook could have beaten the man was to beat the game itself and so from there he spends 13 years mathematically solving checkers because if he solved the entire sport then he would have beat tinsley like it's automatic right right and that's why he did it. Huh. Wow. Huh.

Wow. That is a very, that's a very complete story. That's pretty amazing. It's a movie. I'm very upset I can't go watch it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think Checkers needs to rebrand as something sexier. Yeah.

I feel like chess always had a mystique about smart people playing chess. Checkers doesn't have any of that. There's no pretense with checkers. I think there needs to be a mystery built around checkers before you can sell a movie around it. We need to make checkers sexier. Yeah.

But maybe this is how inject the pieces with hotness i don't know i don't have a solution right yeah but now it's solved like we we did it it's checkers is over now sorry checkers now now i'm just like imagining chinook playing against itself thinking of tley, like thinking of the good old days. Longingly. Just a computer. And it's just a computer with like a red light beeping. At the end,

it's not even playing anymore. It's just like with the pieces drawing out Marion Tinsley's face. There you go. It misses him. Perfect end of the movie. Yeah. You got it, Bridget. Got it in one.

That's the sweetest thing I've ever heard. Oh my god. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Bridget Greenberg and Christian Ramirez for being so fun about a deep dive into a deep and endless well that is, surprisingly, checkers. Anyway, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on patreon.com, patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is Checkers Nixon. There is way more to that dog than you might realize, especially the origin story. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than two dozen other bonus shows,

and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring Checkers with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the rest of the world has its own amazing versions of the game Checkers. And takeaway number two, Checkers is a solved game and the way it got solved should be a movie. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great. Christian Ramirez is at FanboyChristian on Twitter. That's Christian with no H. Bridget Greenberg is at Bridget Tweets. That's Bridget with two Ts. Both of those accounts are linked in the episode links.

There's also a link to the Patreon for Small Beans. Small Beans is a large and wonderful podcasting operation. There's many wonderful people there, including Christian and Bridget. For links to all of that, visit sifpod.fun. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. A great article in Smithsonian. It's called There is a Certain Amount of Humor in Checkers.

It's by Tim Hensley. Two great articles, one from cami.com.ph, another from The Philippine Star. Both of those will show you how to play da math. And then a real pillar of this episode is an epic piece from The Atlantic. It's called How Checkers Was Solved, and it's by Alexis C. Madrigal. from the Atlantic. It's called How Chuckers Was Solved, and it's by Alexis C. Madrigal. Find those and many more sources in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons.

I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. Thank you.