This just in: checkers has been solved. You can theoretically prevent a defeat by Chinook, the “World Man-Machine Checkers Champion“, but a draw is the best you can hope for against this foe. Checkers was solved on April 29, 2007 by the team of Jonathan Schaeffer. We now know that, from the standard starting position, both players can guarantee a draw with perfect play.

Interestingly, checkers is the most complex game that has been solved to date. Modest inroads have been made into chess endgames, but computer science is light-years away from guaranteeing a win or anything like that.
The July 2007 announcement by Chinook’s team stating that the game had been solved must be understood in the sense that, with perfect play on both sides, the game will always finish with a draw. Not all positions that could result from imperfect play have been analyzed.