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True or false? Chess will never be solved! why?

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pdela
pfren wrote:

7- men tablebases are called Lomonosov, and 32-men tablebases would need to be stored some six times the atoms that consist Earth. So,  these tablebases may be invented by aliens which live in a much bigger planet... :P

I checked it out, you can make 10^300 different superpositions of 1000 atoms, so you need quite less that 1,000 atoms to store a 32-men database and there are 100,000,000,000,000 atoms in a cell of a human body


ponz111

Chess will never be solved if your definition of "solved" is to examine all possible positions.

However it is well known by the best chess players that chess is a draw when played with no errors by both sides.

TheGrobe

In other words, it can be solved if your definition of solved isn't the accepted mathematical definition of solved.

Lot's of things can be if you're willing to arbitrarily re-write definitions....

ThrillerFan
ponz111 wrote:

Chess will never be solved if your definition of "solved" is to examine all possible positions.

However it is well known by the best chess players that chess is a draw when played with no errors by both sides.

You have no proof of this.  Maybe it's a forced win for White and nobody has found it yet.  Maybe White is in Zugzwang on move 1 and Black wins by force!

"Chess is a draw" is merely a hypothesis.

Pulpofeira

What about taikyoku shogi? It has so many pieces that there is even a drunken elephant!

zborg

Who will solve the meaning of solve ??  No one, I would imagine.

A draw is still the most plausible outcome.  Purists be damned.

TheGrobe
ThrillerFan wrote:
ponz111 wrote:

Chess will never be solved if your definition of "solved" is to examine all possible positions.

However it is well known by the best chess players that chess is a draw when played with no errors by both sides.

You have no proof of this.  Maybe it's a forced win for White and nobody has found it yet.  Maybe White is in Zugzwang on move 1 and Black wins by force!

"Chess is a draw" is merely a hypothesis.

Ponz is known for overstating this case.  Chess is strongly believed by most of the best players to be a draw with best play from both sides.  It can't be said in much stronger terms than that without taking liberties with the truth.

zborg

And again --

"Chess is strongly believed by most of the best players to be a draw with best play from both sides.  It can't be said in much stronger terms than that without taking liberties with the truth."

 

Chasing the truth, or chasing your tail ??  To infinity and beyond.

"Solved, Truth, God, Evolution, Chess, and Turtles" ... ALL THE WAY DOWN.  Laughing

shell_knight

You can point to other things too like how engines (which play the same every time) draw more as they get stronger.  And the drawing margin for practically all endgames being much more than 1 tempo.

TheGrobe

They may, however, simply draw more because the winning idea(s) are still outside of their analysis horizon -- the same may well be true for humans as well.

shell_knight

You could also loosely argue.  e.g. Lets call the quantity of moves in a position that don't change the evaluation "stability."  I'd say empirically the stability of a position is proportional to the number of pieces on the board and inversely proportional to how dynamic the position is.

Then I'd note the starting position has the greatest number of pieces and is not dynamic.  So it's likely either nearly every first move wins or nearly every first move draws.  Then, again empirically I suppose, because only a few moves take advantage of the first move, you could argue the starting position is just equal.  Reasoning that it's less likely that the many moves that don't take advantage are a forced win.

shell_knight
TheGrobe wrote:

They may, however, simply draw more because the winning idea(s) are still outside of their analysis horizon -- the same may well be true for humans as well.

The idea is that the winning ideas become relatively more scarce as quality of play increases, although because we can't compare to perfect play I agree it's not a strong argument.

ponz111

I rather think the strongest players including almost all grandmasters are correct when they say chess is a draw with best play.

Those who disagree are often not such strong players.

TheGrobe

It's a nice appeal to authority, but this is a mathematical problem as much as it is a chess problem.  The fact is that they just don't know -- they may strongly believe that this is the case, but they cannot know.

shell_knight
ponz111 wrote:

I rather think the strongest players including almost all grandmasters are correct when they say chess is a draw with best play.

Those who disagree are often not such strong players.

Sure, but those who are not GMs but also not in the category you mention "not such strong players" should also have the feeling chess is a draw.  I'm just putting a few of the ideas in words.

And even if it's not unreasonable, an appeal to authority automatically feels specious in any case.

the_Obelisk

What is meant by "solved" 

A certain perfect move order that guarentees a win for white.... 

Can this not only exist if black does not play certain moves 

A draw,  can this not only exist if white and black play the same moves in the same order every time. 

A loss.... I have solved this over and over again.

Will Scrabble ever be solved, or is the random aspect of the way you draw the letters stopping that 

1.E4, F6, 2.Nc3, G5, 3Q h5 ++  there its solved, or should whites second move be d4 ? 

shell_knight

As for black winning.

Against lets reason about zugzwangs.  Proportional to dynamism in the sense of concrete threats and I think certainly inversely proportional to the number of pieces on the board... and again the starting position is not dynamic and has the greatest number of pieces.

As for those that keep saying things like "a move order that wins for white" consider this.  The greater number of pieces, the more variations are needed to show the perfect line.  Rook and king vs king, just a few lines.  But already with drawn positions like certain Rook + 'a' and 'c' pawns vs rook you have tons of lines.  (How many, if any, pros have committed some of these to memory?)

The "perfect game," singular, is a bit of a misnomer.  It would be more like the perfect 10^20 games.

ponz111
shell_knight wrote:
ponz111 wrote:

I rather think the strongest players including almost all grandmasters are correct when they say chess is a draw with best play.

Those who disagree are often not such strong players.

Sure, but those who are not GMs but also not in the category you mention "not such strong players" should also have the feeling chess is a draw.  I'm just putting a few of the ideas in words.

And even if it's not unreasonable, an appeal to authority automatically feels specious in any case.

The higher the just knowledge the more liklihood someone will understand chess is a draw when played perfectly. Even down to the master level--most masters agree chess is a draw when played perfectly by both sides.

shell_knight
ponz111 wrote:
shell_knight wrote:
ponz111 wrote:

I rather think the strongest players including almost all grandmasters are correct when they say chess is a draw with best play.

Those who disagree are often not such strong players.

Sure, but those who are not GMs but also not in the category you mention "not such strong players" should also have the feeling chess is a draw.  I'm just putting a few of the ideas in words.

And even if it's not unreasonable, an appeal to authority automatically feels specious in any case.

The higher the just knowledge the more liklihood someone will understand chess is a draw when played perfectly. Even down to the master level--most masters agree chess is a draw when played perfectly by both sides.

I agree, the more knowledge and ability they have, the more likely they are correct.  And while it's easy to measure their knowledge against a baseline of no knowledge, when we imagine the comparison to the perfect player this actually becomes an argument against their credibility.  i.e. they know much more than nothing, but how close are they to the truth?

Also an arguably shaky assumption is that strength vs draw-likelyhood is linear from beginner to perfect player.  One could make an argument that it only appears linear and only as you get very close to perfect do decisive games suddenly spike.

In both cases it's because we're so far away from perfect play that there's still some doubt.

tjepie

i think it is possible to find al the legal possitions in chess and also find the correct move in al those possitions. but i don't think poeple would be happy if that would be done.