A team of Octopii to predict best chess moves

1996 — Robert Wilensky once jocularly remarked, "We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true."

I believe it was ∞ monkeys on ∞ typewriters would produce "Hamlet". To say that a mere million monkeys with only one typewriter each would produce the entire works of the Bard is clearly an overstatement.

According to the all knowing Wikipedia:

The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.

Your idea that each monkey would be using more than one typewriter is interesting.

2006 — In June 2006, The Colbert Report featured a humorous segment on how many monkeys it would take for various works. This was in response to comments made in the news on monkeys typing out the Bible or the Qur'an. According to Colbert, one million monkeys typing for eternity would produce Shakespeare, ten thousand (drinking) monkeys typing for ten thousand years would produce Hemingway, and ten monkeys typing for three days would produce a work of Dan Brown.

But octopusses can move eight pieces at the same time!

Make that eight. All German games plus the Final. And he had a 70% record at the last Euro. Unfortunately, one of the misses was the final between Spain and Germany.

octopi is fine but octopuses sounds better. 

Sorry, got one "s" too many but the plural is indeed octopuses :o))

I just learned as well that those guys have three hearts!!! Insane what the World Cup does to you ...

i'm all thumbs.  sometimes i mean 1 "s" but my fingers think i mean 2. 

When the choice is binary, the correct sequence of eight choices can happen at random once every 2^8=256 times. Indeed, if every zoo in the world had their own psychic animal, it wouldn't be very surprising to see one perform to 100% when viewed after the fact.

Thing is, Paul had already become famous in 2008 and was being closely watched from the beginning of the tournament, when he was already surmised to be psychic. He proceeded to get all of his eight choices right, a 1-in-256 chance. That's more impressive, although not quite impossible - it's like saying, "I'm gonna flip eight tails in a row right now", and succeeding on the first try. Could you do it?

During the 2008 Euro tournament, in which Paul got four out of six "guesses" right (a very probable outcome even if you just toss a coin), Paul was biased in favor of Germany because he was still too young and fanatic (he picked Germany every time). Therefore, we can safely conclude that as he matured another two years for the World Cup, he let go of his nationalism and concentrated on getting a 100% result. In other words, that's one psychic octopus right there.

Here's my theory:

• Germany are a great team that win almost all their games (70%+)
• put the tastiest food in the pot with the German flag
• assuming an octopus can smell or otherwise identify the best food - it'll choose the German pot

& I understand Paul got 70% or so right - not a mystic octopus sadly.

Ok, but he picked Spain to win.

Not necessarily true, Steinar. An infinite variable can produce a finite result.

 It sounds like something I would enjoy. So far, I haven't been able to find the interview online, e.g. YouTube.

Assuming that by playing an infinite amount of games against Anand, who would never tire, age or die or anything similiar, then eventually, those "random moves" would lead to an incredibly good game with no blunders, good development, a strong attack, etc, and win the game.  Unless you argue that it's completely impossible to beat Anand (which has been proven false), then after enough games played by random-monkey-moves, Anand will lose.

If you then continue the expirement, then eventually, Anand will lose again.  Repeat to infinity - the monkey's will eventually win an infitite number of games.

I do, however, think that they'll have an incredibly low rating long before they reach their first win. 

If n is the length of time that n monkeys are allowed to play and 1/n² for example represents the number of wins in given time n, you will find that the number of monkey wins as lim n→∞ is Σ 1/n² which is a convergent p-series which equals one.

they are actually called world cup finals games so the confusion is understandable