Can God beat the computer?: Today the world's greatest draughts player faces a challenge from an electronic brain, says William Hartston

William Hartston
Sunday 16 August 1992 23:02 BST
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FORGET Carl Lewis's long jumps, Ed Moses's hurdling and Bobby Fischer's chess, for there is one man whose domination of his chosen event makes any other sporting achievement seem puny by comparison. Marion Tinsley, 65, has been the world's greatest draughts player since 1955.

Today, Dr Tinsley, a mathematics professor from Florida, faces the start of the latest and oddest challenge to his long supremacy. The official contender for his world title, in a 40-game match beginning at the Park Lane Hotel in Piccadilly, London, this morning, is a computer called by the punningly draughty name of Chinook, after a swirling wind in the Rocky Mountains.

When Dr Tinsley talks about draughts (or checkers as they call it in America and, for no obvious reason, Newcastle) he sounds far more the gentle academic than the undefeated world champion. The soft-spoken, even pitch of his voice and well-constructed sentences indicate a practised, logical mind, untainted by aggression.

'Checker players are not nearly so colourful and strange as the chess personality,' he maintains. He puts it down to the low status of the game of draughts. The usual response when anyone is introduced to a draughts player is: 'My little boy plays draughts, you must give him a game.' Having to live with the tag of a kid's game has, according to Dr Tinsley, made it impossible for large egos to develop even among the champions. 'Checker players tend to be a little humble, because they realise the world does not think that much of them. 'I know a lot of people for whom checkers is their major outlet. Extremely introverted, quiet people, you couldn't talk to them across a table; so introverted, so shy, until you get them across a checker board. It's like Christianity and the Fellowship of Suffering,' he explains. 'Draughts players have a fellowship of suffering.' But Dr Tinsley is tolerant of those who dismiss his game as trivial: 'I think people look at the checker board and don't see anything, and they conclude there's nothing to see. It's just natural.'

Yet in his experience, this game can satisfy many facets of human need: 'Research, competitive spirit, elegance and beauty.' Then, as if fearing that he may be sounding too emotional, he adds 'but it is only a game.'

Dr Tinsley seems embarrassed when talking about his last world title match, three years ago, when he defeated the unfortunate challenger, Paul Davis, by the huge margin of 10 wins to zero with 20 draws. Two years before that, he had a more closely contested battle against an old student of his, Don Lafferty, whom he beat by two wins to zero with 36 draws. 'I had taught him almost everything I knew,' says Dr Tinsley, more in pride than bitterness.

As a boy in Ohio, he learnt to play checkers at home or school, he forgets which, but it was a lodger in their house, an old lady called Mrs Kershaw, who really irritated him into wanting to become good at the game. 'She used to beat me in game after game,' Dr Tinsley remembers. 'Oh, how she'd cackle.'

Later, when he was 15, the young Tinsley came across a book on checkers in a library. He read it and was hooked, though it was too late to avenge himself on the cackling Kershaw who had, by then, moved on. He gives checkers the credit for developing his mathematics skills in his student years. 'I was a master player before I took my bachelor's degree. Checkers taught me to study.'

After winning the world title in 1955 and defending it in 1958, he retired from competition to devote himself to mathematics teaching and research at Florida State University. A friend, however, made persistent attempts to persuade him back to the checker board. Finally, in 1970, they made a deal: 'I'd compete again, if he gave up drinking.' The friend did not totally stick to his half of the bargain. But Dr Tinsley immediately won the United States championship and, in 1975, regained the world title which he has held ever since.

He is under no illusions about the strength of his latest challenger, which last year beat all other contenders to win the right to a title match. 'Every game I've played that has been published is in Chinook's memory,' he says. 'In one minute, it can look at three million positions. It doesn't know what it's doing, but it's searching trees down to a level of 24 moves.'

The machine also has a complete database of all possible positions of seven pieces or fewer, ensuring perfect play in such endgames, plus all available published draughts analysis. Dr Tinsley laughs when he mentions that Chinook recently lost a game by following faulty analysis, but adds: 'I believe they have many clones of Chinook and they have Chinooks working night and day, sparing no effort to eliminate mistakes.'

Yet he expects to win the match for a reason that goes far deeper than draughts itself. 'I'm sure I have a better programmer than Chinook has. God gave me a logical mind.' Dr Tinsley, who is a part-time minister at the Church of Christ in Tallahassee and teaches bible classes, adds 'I don't want to let my programmer down, and I'm sure I won't'

If the machine does emerge victorious, 'it will shock a lot of people, including me,' he says. 'I don't expect that to happen.' But if it does, he will know the reason: 'The Tinsley of 30 or 40 years ago would have won. He was much younger and more alert, brighter, but not so mature and didn't know so much. He spent night and day obsessed with the game of checkers. It was life.'

Now the bible classes are the most important element of his life. Dr Tinsley recalls a journalist who recently told him that he was much more emotional and animated when talking about his faith than when talking about checkers. 'I could have hugged him,' says the gentle professor.

(Photograph omitted)

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