Google Solves Chess!
Submitted by
SonofPearl on Tue, 03/31/2009 at 10:59pm.
Chess will never be the same again. Until now, many mathematicians claimed it wasn’t possible to ‘solve’ chess due to the exponentially large number of possible games (10^120). However, in a dramatic development today the search giant Google announced that it had developed an online application which could play the royal game ‘perfectly’.
Besides playing perfect chess, ‘GoogleChess’ as the application is known, will allow users to input any legal chess position either manually or by importing a standard FEN file. The application engine then searches for the position on a vast Google database and retrieves the ‘answer’ – the best move in that position and the result of the game assuming perfect play by both sides.
This startling advance comes less than 2 years after checkers (on an 8x8 board) was solved by Jonathan Schaeffer, author of the famous Chinook engine (if you didn't already know, checkers is a draw with best play!).
How did Google achieve the seemingly impossible? Even with Google’s massive technical resources, it wasn’t easy. The precise details of the breakthrough are still being kept secret, but the approach is rumoured to utilise an advanced search algorithm which was originally developed as part of their familiar internet search engine.
So with perfect play, is chess a draw, a win for white, or even a win for black? A Google spokesman said, “Some people may not want to know the answer, but this is a great day for chess. The truth was a little surprising, but I think everyone will be pleased to finally find out.”
Some might feel that ignorance is bliss, but word will soon leak out, so to discover the answer for yourself, see the full announcement here.
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