Chess Will Never Be Solved. Why?

This fixation with "assessing positions" .... how exactly is it going to be achieved? Can your "cloud engine" just quickly assess a position as definitely winning, losing or drawing, just by looking at it for a split second? No calculation needed? No exploring endless pathways?

If so, then just point the cloud engine at the opening position with nothing moved, for a split second and it will, of course, assess it and derive the strategy necessary for the win, loss or draw which is inherent in the opening position. No need to wait five years.

Why do you deliberately give out false information? I just proved that your method is impossible. Do you understand what I wrote? No. Will you ignore it? Yes. Have you similarly ignored everyone else? Yes. Are you right?

maybe

but to solve chess wont u have to know every move????

If you know every position why do you have to know every move ?

Example - endgame tablebase.
King and rook against King.
If the position is not stalemate - then does it have to be analyzed further ?
Its a win.  Done deal.

Try this:  Somebody plays their knight out on move 1 of a game ...
Nf3.  Now the opponent replies Nf6.
So then white puts the knight back at g1 and Black puts his knight back at g8.
Why would we have to know every one of such moves ?
That's part of the idea of positions instead.

#154

"This fixation with "assessing positions" .... how exactly is it going to be achieved?"
++ By calculation from the opening towards the 7-men endgame table base.

"Can your "cloud engine" just quickly assess a position as definitely winning, losing or drawing, just by looking at it for a split second?"
++ No, all existing or future evaluation functions are inherently flawed. The only way to reliably assess a position is by calculation towards the 7-men endgame table base.

"No calculation needed?" ++ No, on the contrary: much calculation needed from the opening towards the 7-men endgame table base.

"No exploring endless pathways?" ++ No, not endless, but still many.

"Why do you deliberately give out false information?"
++ No, I do not, I give out correct information. You seem unable or unwilling to understand it.

"I just proved that your method is impossible" ++ No, you did not. You apparently even misunderstood what I wrote many times. I should repeat some hoping more to sink it in.

"Do you understand what I wrote?"
++ Yes, I understand but you are wrong. You apparently do not understand what I wrote.

"Will you ignore it?" ++ No, I do not , but I probably should.

"Have you similarly ignored everyone else?"
++  No, I addresses all even remotely meaningful posts, but I probably should ignore more.

"Are you right?" ++ Yes, of course.

"I should repeat some hoping more to sink it in."
Repeating more - establishes more that it is misleading spam.
"I should repeat some hoping more to sink it in."
Not a new thing.
But it does get attention.  In that particular way - it is effective.
If it were to be compared with flat earth notions -
maybe about par with each other.
So that's the main dynamic - the fact that it gets attention.
A false positive.

there are 20 possible moves in the starting position

#159
"there are 20 possible moves in the starting position"
++ Only 4 of these are relevant: 1 e4, 1 d4, 1 c4, 1 Nf3.

"there are 20 possible moves in the starting position"
For each side.
But then it gets much tougher and more and more mathematically unmanageable.
Whereas upper bounds on the number of possible positions is relatively neat in comparison.
The math on types of positions starts off neater too.

Simply defining positions by the number of pieces on the board.
Could be called numerical classes of positions.   31 of them.
And its still neat and  manageable by computers - within each numerical class as to the subcategories of which types of pieces are on the board including how many of each.

So for two kings or for all 32 pieces - there's only one subcategory.
Itself in each case.
But for three pieces there's ten subcategories depending on what the extra piece is and its color.

For 31 pieces -   not so simple.
31 pieces means there's been a capture.
Which means promotion is enabled in that case.
The pawns can't get past each other unless something has been or is captured.
But computers could handle all those subcategories.
Not solve them.  But they could classify them.
That particular element of chess could be solved and is very likely solved a long time ago.
Why ? How?  Because the numbers and the math are not heavyweight on such classifications.

And yes - somebody will try to push for only 4 starting moves to be relevant and the other 16 irrelevant.
Will he get disciples? supporters? verbal pingpong from same?
Probably.
But that can also be posted around or ignored.

#161
"Simply defining positions by the number of pieces on the board."
++ Yes, this has been calculated:
32 men: 1.89 * 10^33 positions
31 men: 1.71 * 10^34 positions
30 men: 1.64 * 10^35 positions
29 men: 1.53 * 10^36 positions
28 men: 5.46 * 10^36 positions
27 men: 1.05 * 10^37 positions
26 men: 1.08 * 10^37 positions
25 men: 6.14 * 10^36 positions
24 men: 3.19 * 10^36 positions
23 men: 5.66 * 10^35 positions
Table 3, page 8
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.09386.pdf 

Interesting that they'd peak at 26 pieces.
Well that particular post isn't spam.

Plenty of games without those moves played by GMs in Informant.

If c4 is relevant - then f4 and b3 and g3 and a whole bunch of reversed openings are relevant too.  All 20 moves are relevant.
But this post by me now could be a mistake.  Its biting at the bait.
"Sir - we believe there's a Rolex watch orbiting Jupiter.
We'd like to know if you're a believer in that or an atheist or agnostic on that."
Correct reply:  "I'm none of the above.  I'm not even going to consider it."

#165
"Plenty of games without those moves played by GMs in Informant."
Yes, but not at the highest levels like in world championship matches or in ICCF correspondence.
Andersen has opened 1 a3.
Basman has opened 1 g4 and 1 h3.
Larsen has opened 1 f4.
Fischer has opened 1 b3 four times and won all 4.
See Figure 5 on page 17
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.09259.pdf 

The figure does not support your claim that 16 other first moves are irrelevant. AlphaZero used all of them in training.

If they lack theoretical interest, they do not get published in Informant. The periodical has clear standards.

#168
"The figure does not support your claim that 16 other first moves are irrelevant."
++ The figure supports that 1 e4, 1 d4, 1 c4, and 1 Nf3 are superior over the other 16 moves.
AlphaZero trained itself with no other input but the rules of chess. So it had to look at and dismiss the inferior lines.

"If they lack theoretical interest, they do not get published in Informant."
++ Oh yes, chess is a game and it is often beneficial to deliberately play inferior moves e.g. to avoid opening preparation. However to analyse chess those inferior moves are not relevant.
This game was published in Chess Informant, but its theoretical interest is questionable.
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1068157 

"those inferior moves are not relevant"
And the Pope is a teenager.
It isn't even proven that the alternatives to the four favored moves are inferior.
Stats reporting they win less doesn't prove it.
But that's about as far as the conversation will go. Depth-wise.
Its like talking to Flat Earth believers. 

     This is the difficulty with pruning positions or lines from the analysis. Can we be positive that there are no previously unexplored possibilities there that may contain a surprise. We're humans or present-day computers sufficiently knowledgeable the solution would be imminent but experts have been mistaken before as to the extent of our expertise.

Terrifically important game! Thanks.

Those are not Informant annotations, however. Too bad Keene was allowed to mess with Miles’ annotations. What Tony Miles had to say merits attention.

Hi, I did explain it all carefully but perhaps you didn't read it. A lot of moves look like blunders but if there's a faint possibility that they do in fact contain a forced win or forced equality, beyond the engine's search horizon, then it would be necessary to explore them. This is equally necessary for forced drawing lines, because the resultant position could be a unique one that contains a further big surprise, down the line. The algorithms in present search engines aren't capable of distingushing "normal blunders" from hidden brilliancies IN ALL CASES and so they can't possibly cope with such admittedly hypothetical lines we're discussing. They're hypothetical not in the sense that they don't really exist. They do exist or we must assume that they do, at the very least, in order to be fairly sure of accuracy. They're hypothetical in the sense that we don't know WHICH lines they may be and that's very much the point.

I've explained it slightly differently and more fully this time. I had assumed it would be obvious to anyone interested in this subject and so previously I mentioned it mainly for form's sake, to make it clear that there's an immense problem with assumptions that the job is a straightforward one, which just takes time.

The result is that the search has to be much wider than many, in fact, have assumed in this thread, to be sure that any solution for chess is a full one. (I'm not discussing it in terms of "strong" or "weak". In fact, those ideas are confused and they contribute to the general lack of understanding of the subject matter. It means that a so-called "weak" solution is dependent on the achievement of a semi-strong one, in any case. Anyone who doesn't yet understand that, cannot be capable of understanding the problems involved, because understanding it is an elementary necessity. You can call "semi-strong" "semi-weak" if you think that's clearer but it buys into the already confused thinking of the experts. After all if you consider a particular GM "an expert" and yet he thinks it can be done in five years, he for one is very confused. He just doesn't understand the poblems. Probably a naive belief in computing power.)

It's also why I think that there'll never be a breakthrough unless chess is *mathematically* solved ... ie rendered into an immensely complex mathematical equation or set of equations, which can quantitively identify points of imbalance in chess games. Since that isn't on the horizon and the normal routes would take millions of years of computing, even at the fastest speeds, we can safely assume that chess will never be solved.