[jayro]

This is a fun book (published in 2001) about how a professor and his graduate assistant developed a world-class checkers-playing algorithm using neuroevolution:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blondie24

https://www.amazon.com/Blondie24-Playing-Kaufmann-Artificial...

(Edit) One of the funniest parts I remember is that they had to leave it running on a Pentium III for like a month or something.