Chess Will Never Be Solved. Why?

Again the spam about "10^9" nodes
But now something else coming out -
its 'five years' because Sveshnikov said so ??
so its also 'rumor based' as well as mathematically invalid in the first place.
With a circular argument also in -
that the 'tiny fraction' is known in advance - without proving what its value is is or even defining it at all.
Argument by assertion:  'tiny fraction'.
But no sign of the 'lets take the square root' creature yet ...
but if one listens carefully - is it audible in the distance -
getting closer ? 
Behind the trees or maybe over that rise ?  😁

Anyway, the number of positions is irrelevant because each position then has to be analysed. Obviously there would be a lot of redundancy doing it that way and therefore the only way to attempt it is to follow every possible game. That's yet another mistake the so-called experts in these threads have made. Doing it by following games is the only efficient method, because, among other good reasons, determining whether a position may be reached legitimately becomes unnecessary.

(I couldn't believe that the conversation was stuck for so long in trying to work out how to determine if a position can be legally achieved. Elroch and others, who have or claim to have computing experience, had no idea how to achieve an analysis most efficiently.)

Obviously, by far the greatest majority of positions is irrelevant to a well-played chess game and so is irrelevant to a "solution" for chess, which naturally rejects obvious blunders, which are of a game-changing (result-changing) nature. The difficulty of determining whether a move is really a blunder or whether it can lead to a surprising result has, thankfully, at last been noted. It means that pruning the search tree by means of a set of algorithms cannot be as active as efficiency would dictate, so a lot of redundancy has to be left for the full analysis to deal with. The net result is that even a so-called "weak" analysis is phenomenally difficult. But what hasn't been realised is how endless a so-called "strong" one would be.

I detest the use of the descriptors "weak" and "strong". The words are jargon which is unfit for purpose, because it fails to easily convey the intended meaning. It's better to be more descriptive and use  words like "complete" and "reduced". I would even argue that weak and strong, when they're thus used, are used the wrong way round. It's "weak" not to prune, because "weak" and "strong" should more properly refer to adaptive input into the search tree. A "strong" solution is one that is adapted so as to be most fitted to the task and a weak one isn't, so they seem to be used in exactly the opposite way to the intuitively correct one. Just a small point and one that doesn't affect outcomes, although using better descriptors would probably lead to more people understanding what's going on. Always be as descriptive as possible. Cut out needless jargon and use "full" and "pruned" or "complete" and "reduced", to describe searches.

#135

"the number of positions is irrelevant because each position then has to be analysed"
++ The number of legal, sensible, reachable, and relevant positions is the only relevant number in this discussion: it is the time in nanoseconds it takes on 1 cloud engine of 10^9 nodes/s.

"the only way to attempt it is to follow every possible game"
++ No, not at all: there are enormously more games than positions. Every position can be reached by more games than there are positions. Transpositions are a major feature.

"Doing it by following games is the only efficient method, because, among other good reasons, determining whether a position may be reached legitimately becomes unnecessary."
++ No, you do not need to determine legality. Just calculate forward and use transposition tables. That is also how Losing Chess has been solved.

"by far the greatest majority of positions is irrelevant to a well-played chess game and so is irrelevant to a "solution" for chess"
++ Yes, pruning is the key to make weakly solving chess feasible.
We know that 1 e4 e5 2 Ba6 loses for white, so it needs no analysis.
We know that 1 a4 is not superior to 1 e4 or 1 d4, so 1 a4 is not relevant.

"I detest the use of the descriptors "weak" and "strong". The words are jargon which is unfit for purpose, because it fails to easily convey the intended meaning."
++ It is easy:
Ultra-weakly solved means that the game-theoretic value of the initial position has been determined,
weakly solved means that for the initial position a strategy has been determined to achieve the game-theoretic value against any opposition, and
strongly solved is being used for a game for which such a strategy has been determined for all legal positions

"It's better to be more descriptive and use  words like "complete" and "reduced""
++ No, that would only confuse.

Honestly, I've completely given up even imagining that you're capable of a meaningful input. It will only seem meaningful to others who also haven't got the faintest clue. Maybe you once could think well .... I don't know. But now you just endlessly repeat this stuff which is hopelessly inaccurate. The only people who will agree with you are those who are similarly clueless.

Why don't you try to get your brain to engage the arguments, for once?

I could ask you how you are going to analyse the positions, if you imagine that positions are the only relevant variable. Do you have a miraculous algorithm that can analyse each position just by looking at it in a nanosecond? In that case why don't you just apply it to the starting position and analyse that in a nanosecond? Job done!

You haven't an answer, have you. It's just going to be something along the lines of GM Father Christmas said it can be done in five years, backed up by GM Easter Bunny, maybe.

The only possible way of doing it is by analysing games or by the way I suggested in these threads several years ago .... by developing an algorithm that can reduce chess to a mathematical equation.

When I was watching the conversations on this thread and on others regarding this subject slowly develop, the first thing to notice was that newcomers who could apparently think quite well never stayed long. There was what seemed like a cabal that was determined to endlessly perpetuate its blinkered views. One or two, like btickler or MAR, obviously had computer experience and tended to take a back seat or argue about a specific thing. Then there was the troll, who repeated everything 96 times in both directions and deliberately swamped the boards to obliterate everything in a sea of meanglessness. And tygxc, a stand-in for the departed Ponz, but determined that the idea of solving chess in five years must stand, because a GM somewhere said so. No-one giving the conversation any direction. Constant, petty arguments about the numbers of nodes per light year.

It was notable that when I saw that the division into weak and strong solutions was completely meaningless except in abstract, which was a pretty instantaneous assessment; and that the original computer scientists who did that must have been on acid, there was very strong resistance to that. But of course I was right and now only Ponz I mean tygxc sticks to that. Of course, it's a moot point. It shouldn't matter what we call things but it was clear, at least to me, that the original definitions of weak and strong solutions much have been proposed by a philosophy professor as a joke, to see if students could spot the problems with those definitions. Back in the early 90s when I studied for a philosophy degree, it was clear that there was quite a cross-over between philosophy and computing. There was a healthy interest in both directions. I knew that because I originally enrolled in a computing degree, completed the first year, coming in the top ten out of 80+ students; and transferred to philosophy. Computing and programming had been my main hobby, apart from walking, hill climbing and chess. I decided to let it remain a hobby because I was interested in creating compact and highly efficient code and programs, whereas things were moving fast towards the opposite, top-down approach, with all of its incredible coding redundancy and lack of speed.

The number of possible chess positions is of course - not irrelevant.
But people will try to sidestep it in different ways.
And with varying rationales.

And - should anybody care about what den Herik's definitions of what weakly or strongly solved means ?
Or anybody's definition of 'solved' other than their own ?
Suggestion:  each individual decides for him/herself.
On each point.
Including about generic discussion versus brandname/credentials discussion.
The first upper bound of possible positions is known.
13 to the 64th power.  Well defined mathematically.
No need to quote experts.  Its straight math.
As chess evolved - did anybody care about 'total solving' ?
Unlikely.  It wasn't designed and further adapted with such in mind.
But now there's not only computers - there's chess software too.
Its big business.  
So projects like endgame tablebases are offshoots of that.

Chess has a game-tree complexity of about 10^120 but if you only account for moves that make sense then the number goes down to 10^40. Checkers has a square root number of positions as chess and has only been weakly solved. It will take a technological breakthrough to solve chess.

I think even that wouldn't be enough. Maybe a mathematical breakththrough might.

It isn't directly relevant. The number of meaningful games is the relevant factor and of course, that's open to discussion. Obviously a game ceases to be meaningful once an obvious, game-changing blunder has been committed. Given that in a "full solution" most games will have such a blunder in the first three moves, that cuts the games down by qute a lot. But it's games that are relevant and not positions. That's despite the insistence of all the experts here that positions are what is important. They're quite wrong, of course, since those positions then have to be assessed, basically as ongoing games. Therefore the correct method is to assess game lines and junk every line where a game-changing blunder is known to have occurred. I don't mean "seems to have occurred" because we need accuracy.

'Taking the square root' isn't legitimate - to reduce the number of possible chess positions.
The number of possible games (permutations of moves) results in an even more unmanageable number.

Regarding the number of possible chess positions (which is directly relevant) -
the larger the number - then when you 'take the square root' then that's a larger ratio of the positions.
Square root of 900 is 30.  So you're left with a number that's been cut down  by over 96%.
But the square root of 10^38th power is 10^19.
In other words you're left with a number that is far less than a trillionth of the previous number.
Its ridiculous.
How about we 'take the cube root' instead?  Or the 4th root?
In other words - as part of the sales pitch just simply cut the number down by whim - and then 'solve' in three weeks ?

Quite right.

Concertclown mentioned a cube root. ie 10 ^120 > 10 ^40

Lets revolutionize space travel !  
The distance to the nearest star Alpha Centauri is over four light years away.
In other words about 25 trillion miles ...
But to make the trip easier -
lets take the Square Root of the distance !!

Then its only 5 million miles !
Our spacecraft can go 25,000 mph Easy !  
That would only be 200 hours.   !!!
A little over a week.  Want to go to the nearest star ?
Credit cards accepted.
Anytime you've got a difficult task that takes a long time - just take the square root of the time.
If something costs too much money - ask the seller to take the square root of the price ...

Now now, you made your point!

#142
"It will take a technological breakthrough to solve chess."
++ To strongly solve chess it takes a technological breakthrough e.g. in quantum computers to generate a full 32-men table base: from 7 to 8 to 9... to 32.

Weakly solving chess is already in reach of present computers.
3 cloud engines of 10^9 nodes/s can in 5 years assess
10^9/s/engine * 3 engines * 5 a * 365.25 d/a * 24 h/d * 3600 s/h = 10^17 positions
So the question is how many legal, sensible, reachable, and relevant positions there are.

but all the possible moves?

very long to calculate it..

"but all the possible moves?"
That's a different number - and even more unmanageable.
If every position was solved (hypothetically) - then why worry about all possible moves?
All possible moves is relevant - but if that was the approach from the opening position ...
then maybe the time it would take to 'solve' chess would have to be multiplied by an 80 digit number.   

This is just incorrect. Repeating it ad infinitum was what got me into so much trouble with mpaetz. He saw me getting irritated at the rubbish you keep repeating.

For some reason that forum went quiet.
Maybe people began to realize that forum was dominated by months-long repetition of its second post.