Checkers is far more finite. You have half of the squares to consider, and at any given time, you have a dozen or so legal moves (never more than 24). That's why good checker players go out 30 (or whatever) moves, and chess players go out 10...after 10 moves in chess, the amount of legal board configurations after 10 turns is probably more than checkers after 30.
Finally, wasn't checkers 'solved' not to long ago?
Edit: yep:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1144079
Quote:
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The game of checkers has roughly 500 billion billion possible positions (5 x 1020). The task of solving the game, determining the final result in a game with no mistakes made by either player, is daunting. Since 1989, almost continuously, dozens of computers have been working on solving checkers, applying state-of-the-art artificial intelligence techniques to the proving process. This paper announces that checkers is now solved: Perfect play by both sides leads to a draw. This is the most challenging popular game to be solved to date, roughly one million times as complex as Connect Four. Artificial intelligence technology has been used to generate strong heuristic-based game-playing programs, such as Deep Blue for chess. Solving a game takes this to the next level by replacing the heuristics with perfection.
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