If you’ve ever played chess or even checkers, you’ve probably thought about making a board that lets a computer play you without having to enter your moves and look at the board on a screen.

People have been interested in chess-playing computers before there ... consider a 4×4 checkerboard with four red checkers on one side and four black checkers on the other. For the first move ...

It’s a veritable minefield. Navigating that minefield becomes a game, a little bit like playing checkers or chess. Checkers and chess have some obvious similarities. They’re played on the same ...