Chess will never be solved, here's why

#3766

"I'm talking about solving chess." ++ Me too. The closest we have to that are ICCF World Championship games, TCEC engine games, and human grandmaster games. If most of these were draws by the 50-moves rule, then it would be plausible that there might be wins without the 50-moves rule, but that is not the case: the 50 moves rule is rarely invoked before 7 men are reached. When two intelligent entities human, engine, or centaur play, then their games usually end before move 50. The rules of the game are such that good play automatically demands pawn moves or captures.

"If there was a solution to chess in less than 50 moves, I think someone would have found it by now." ++ Chess is a draw. It is harder to prove a draw than to prove a win. Losing Chess (64 squares, 32 men, 6 kinds of men, just like chess) is a forced win and needed only 10^9 positions. Checkers is a simpler game (32 squares, 24 men, 2 kinds of men) but needed 10^14 positions. We already have part of the solution: 99% of the ICCF World Championship drawn games are perfect games with no error from either side. However 1000 perfect games are not a full solution.

TCEC games average out to more like 60 moves as I recall when last I checked, and many go over a hundred moves.

You cannot determine a perfect game without solving chess, and saying that engines play perfect games because the same or other engines cannot discern any errors in those games is a form of circular logic you ought to understand, but apparently do not.

#3768
last ICCF World Championship:
Longest 102
Shortest 16
Average 39
Standard deviation 14
In TCEC games drag on longer, as there is no human entity to cut short obvious draws.

That was a fairly long winded way of saying "you are right, btickler", don't you think?

#3770
Yes, you are right: TCEC games last longer than ICCF games.
However that does not indicate something fundamental, it is just that the TCEC engines play on in drawn opposite colored bishop endgames until they reach a 3-fold repetition, while the ICCF grandmasters just agree on a draw.
Here is an example
https://iccf.com/game?id=1164259
The ICCF grandmasters agree on a draw as they know further continuation is pointless. TCEC engines would play on.
This is 99% sure to be a perfect game.

#3768
"You cannot determine a perfect game without solving chess" ++ I cannot determine a perfect game, but I can apply statistics on 136 games and infer that 99% of ICCF games are perfect games with no error. That is based on error probability calculation.

"saying that engines play perfect games because the same or other engines cannot discern any errors in those games" ++ That is not what I do. I apply statistics and probability calculation on ICCF tournaments of 136 games each. Each such game represents a few years of engine time.

Since you cannot determine that, what you are really saying is that ICCF games are played to the highest current standard of play, without discernable errors in hindsight being detectable.  It doesn't matter how long you run the engine for past a certain point because of diminishing returns, the same way you could let Sveshnikov ponder one opening for his whole life and he still wouldn't be able to claim perfect play even for that opening.

#3773
"ICCF games are played to the highest current standard of play" ++ Yes

"without discernable errors in hindsight being detectable"
++ Yes, but also with error probability calculation indicating 99% probability of 0 error.

"you could let Sveshnikov ponder one opening for his whole life and he still wouldn't be able to claim perfect play even for that opening."
++ Sveshnikov claimed his 1988 book The Sicilian Pelikan had B33 fully analysed to a draw.
'"By publishing a monograph on the 5...e5 system in 1988, I practically exhausted this variation. Since that time only some details have been developed, without introducing anything particularly new: the evaluations of the main lines have hardly changed. I described everything in such detail, that it became hard playing 5...e5 even against first category players...'

Carlsen and Caruana and their teams of grandmasters and cloud engines tacitly agreed to that as in their World Championship match games Carlsen allowed the main line 7 Bg5 and Caruana avoided it.

ICCF games also confirm this:
https://iccf.com/game?id=1164361 
This game too is 99% sure to be a perfect game with 0 error.

else... it is plausible anyway, but he tries to make you think otherwise.

Period. Mathematically proven. No doubt. 100% sure... So why nobody wrote a paper to declare chess ultra-weakly solved is a mistery.

For calculations tygxc and tygxc only believes correct.

#3775

"else... it is plausible anyway"
++ No, not at all. You can put forward hypotheses like "Chess is a white win in 500" , or "Chess is a black win in 500", but then you have to at least put forward some begin of evidence to support that. There is no such evidence. On the contrary there is ample evidence that chess is a draw.

"Chess is a draw." ++ Yes indeed.

"For calculations tygxc and tygxc only believes correct." ++ If you do not understand simple high school math, then that is OK, but what you do not understand is not incorrect.

It does not need to be a win in 500 and absence of evidence is not a proof. It's an "argument from ignorance", one of the many fallacies you use.

I repeat: period. Mathematically proven. No doubt. 100% sure... So why nobody wrote a paper to declare chess ultra-weakly solved is a mistery.

Because tygxc and tygxc only believes that if someone thinks his calculations are flawed, it's because s/he does not understand them, not because they can be, for example, based on false premises. And I am not the only one thinking that. You are the only one thinking otherwise. Is that a proof that you are wrong? No, but since you talk about your calculations as if they were confirmed and accepted by everyone on this planet, I just point out that this is not the case. They are accepted only by you.

#3777

"absence of evidence is not a proof" ++ No, that is true. But there is not even begin of evidence that chess is a white win or a black win. There is ample evidence that chess is a draw.

"Mathematically proven" ++ No chess is a draw is known, but not yet formally proven.
"No doubt. 100% sure" ++ Indeed, no doubt, 100% sure.
"why nobody wrote a paper"
++ Many experts wrote chess is a draw and provided arguments, there is not yet a formal proof.

"calculations as if they were confirmed and accepted by everyone on this planet"
++ If I calculate the area of a square with 1 m side to be 1 m², then I need neither confirmation nor acceptance, that is simple and true. If I were to find a proof of the Riemann Hypothesis, then I would need confirmation and acceptance, but not by everyone on this planet.

Many things have been "known" by some people (not by others) and then proven to be false. It is smart not to use the word "know" inappropriately. This is true even when it is a good bet that the guess is true.

A proof of the Riemann hypothesis would not have to be verified by everyone, but here the correct analogy is that you claim to "know" the Riemann hypothesis is true and the majority of those here point out to you that you do not have a proof and that that is crucial.

So, since there is no proof that chess is not a win, it's plausible that chess is a win. Again, you just confirm what people say, but you try to make it appear the opposite.

You have used this kind of argument many times: "it is known, 100% sure, but not proven". If you know something with 100% of certainity without an exhaustive proof, you are some sort of clairvoyant. If you have such capabilities I cannot say, but for a scientist something is known with 100% of certainity when it is exhaustively proven, otherwise it is faith. Since just one forced winning line is enough to make invalid all the drawing lines, without a mathematical proof that chess is a draw, the game cannot be declared ultra-weakly solved, no matter what you or chess experts may believe.

Manipulation again. You accuately did not quote the rest of my sentence: "[ . . . ] to declare chess ultra-weakly solved is a mistery". Indeed, yours is another confirmation, but again you try to make it appear as an objection.

But everyone agrees that 1m × 1m = 1m². I just pointed out that you and only you think that your "Riemann Hypothesis proof" is correct.

I have had enough of arguing with you for today. Everyone can draw their conclusions from the above.

#3779
It is a good bet that the 'guess' that the Sun will rise tomorrow is true.
We do not 'know' that. The Sun might be swallowed by a wormhole tonight.

@Optimissed,

Your vision of science is (no offense) old school, positivistic. I follow Popper's approach: nothing can be really sure if you don't have all the necessary informations and since we do not know everything about our universe, we do not know whether what we don't know is not necessary to full understand what we already "know". @Elroch mentioned Jaynes, too. I think that most scientists today are not positivists, even if they do not talk much about that; nevertheless you know that they refrain to call QM or GR other than "theories", even if these have been well supported by experiments for more than a century. So, no, we don't even know for sure that the sun will rise tomorrow: in the future, we could find evidence that a star can explode for inexplicable (to current knowledge) reasons, even if such an event would be extremely rare, of course, otherwise we would have already observed many times stars like the sun explode for no apparent reason.

As for chess, it is justified to hypothesize that the game may be other than a draw, because just one forcing winning line would render all the drawing lines irrelevant to the topic. That's why many can say "chess is a draw", or better "chess is likely a draw", but no one dares to write a paper stating that chess is ultra-weakly solved.

#3779

"So, since there is no proof that chess is not a win, it's plausible that chess is a win."
++ No. a priori there are 3 mutually exclusive hypotheses.
1) Chess is a draw
2) Chess is a win for white
3) Chess is a win for black
There is massive evidence for 1)
There is no begin of evidence for 2) and it would contradict certain observed facts
There is no begin of evidence for 3) and it would contradict certain observed facts

"You have used this kind of argument many times" ++ It is no argument, it is an observation: 'provability is a higher degree of truth' - Scientific American

"for a scientist something is known with 100% of certainity when it is exhaustively proven,"
++ That is false. In most sciences including biology, chemistry, physics, and even in some branches of mathematics like statistics and probablility no exhaustive proof is required.
'An apple falls downward' That is true, but not proven. All apples so far observed have fallen downward, but maybe on one day in one place an apple will fall upward... We do not know, it is not proven.

"one forced winning line is enough to make invalid all the drawing lines"
++ That is true, but that one line would have some signs. If it were observed, that a remarkable high number of ICCF games with the Grünfeld Defence were won for black, then 1 d4 might be refuted and a win for black. If it were observed, that the number of white wins starts to rise in ICCF, then that might be an indication that there might be a forced white win. The facts are different: the higher the level, the more draws.

I compare the forced white or black win to a unicorn. I know unicorns do not exist, but I cannot prove that. If you believe unicorns exist, then you have to provide at least begin of evidence. It is not enough to say horses exist and animals with two horns exist, so a unicorn is likely to exist as well. Evidence would be if you capture one or photograph one. Even if you find a hoof imprint or some manure or part of a skeleton and you can prove that it is not from a horse or from a known animal with two horns, that would at least be begin of evidence.

"the game cannot be declared ultra-weakly solved" ++ Right, there is not yet a formal proof.

#3783
'you know that they refrain to call QM or GR other than "theories",'
++ No, not at all. A century ago people spoke of 'Quantum Theory' and 'Relativity Theory'. Nowadays it is just Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Electrodynamics, Quantum Chromodynamics, Special Relativity, General Relativity... These are even daily used in the engineering of LED, laser, computers, particle accelerators... Those are no longer 'theories'.

'no one dares to write a paper stating that chess is ultra-weakly solved'
++ It is not a matter of daring. Many experts have written that chess is a draw.
However, there is not yet a formal proof.

tygxc wrote this many times. It is an unreferenced (where exactly did he read that? He does not remember, so nobody can falsify him), out of the context, ambiguous ("higher degree"?) and irrelevant statement, because if it says that something can be true without having been proven (which is just obvious), it does not state that tygxc knows what is true without proofs.

The usual deceptions...

Emphases in green are mine:

"General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics." [1]

"Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles." [2]

Now of course he will say that I simply read these things on Wikipedia and that he knows much better, but it is not true. Beware the pseudoscientists!

#3787
Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Anybody can edit there.
The entries are 'general relativity' and 'quantum mechanics', not 'relativity theory' or 'quantum theory' as they were formerly known.
They are considered true as they are consistent with observed facts, but they are not formally proven.