Chess will never be solved, here's why

The comment in #3156 has no value.

(response to post by haiaku, apparently removed)

"Indeed, I did not find claims like: "the initial position is not a draw" by top players of this century, but I think it's equally difficult to find statements like: "the initial position is a draw" by all of them" ++ Some do not care to talk. Those that did talk are unanimous: a draw.

"You acknowledge that there was no unanimous consensus in the last century"
++ Even in the previous century the qualitative and quantitative majority thought / said chess is a draw. Rauzer and Berliner held a minority opinion and believed in white supremacy in chess. Things are different now, as the drawing rate at top level has gone up, as we now have engines, AlphaZero, ICCF and TCEC with a high and rising drawing rate. Even so, inspection of the few decisive games always enables to pinpoint a mistake by the losing side. In the last world championship match all 4 decisive games were drawn positions before that identifyable mistake. Likewise all ICCF WC decisive games have identifyable mistakes, usually because of human factors like illness.

"but the game-theoretic value is not considered scientifically determined, so the number of mistakes cannot be considered scientifically determined."
++ AlphaZero autoplay gives more draws with more time/move even if stalemate = win.
-> How do you explain that under the assumption that chess were a white win?

"they usually avoid simplifications, if they want to increase their chances of winnig."
++ No, top players do not avoid simplifications. Most games among top players are won in the endgame i.e. after simplifications. There are many reasons to simplify. If one side is a pawn up, then that side will place pieces in the center to invite trades to simplify to increase the relative importance of the pawn. The other side usually cannot evade that as it cannot allow the other side to occupy the center that works as high ground. The only exception are rooks, that are equally active from all squares. That is the reason why rook endings occur that often: the defending side can avoid trading rooks.
Top players also simplify to gain a positional advantage: trading an inactive piece for an active piece. Fischer had no inactive pieces: he traded them away.

"I provided arguments that explains the draw rate better than yours"
++ How so? For the last completed ICCF WC I explained the 127 draws, the 6 white wins and the 3 black wins: 126 perfect games with no errors, 1 draw with 2 errors, 9 decisive games with 1 error. I can even pinpoint the 1 error in the 9 decisive games.
-> Can you tell how many games with 0, 1, 2, 3, 4... errors there are under the assumption that chess were white win?

"Do you consider it proven by mathematician Tromp that there are 10^44 legal chess positions?
It's an estimation."
Please do not dodge the question. 
-> Do you consider proven, yes, or no?
"the number of legal chess positions is approximately (4.82 +- 0.03) * 10^44"
Tromp first deduced and then induced.
He determined the legality of a sample of 10^6 positions and concluded 10^44 are legal.
If he can use induction, then so can I.

Homer Simpson moments!

I did read the link. It consisted of a page of aimless stuff, apparently telling us what a great team of researchers they are. But it's totally uninteresting.

These are plays on words and trying to assign binary A or B to things that are scalar and paradoxical and that have grey areas.
Words are to serve us.  Not us to serve the words.

I remember commenting after 2000 posts here -
as to the next 1000 posts ...  
what they might look like.
And would it just be essentially a reiteration of the previous 2000 ...

And so far - no answer to my point that a King in check by three pieces being illegal should mean that no 'retrograde analysis' is needed to then instantly determine that a King in check by four pieces is therefore also illegal.  And by five pieces and six and so on.
Logic.  Not computer crunching. 
Dead silence to that.
Because it can't be argued with?
Argument.  Disagreement.  Conflict.  Contest.
Dead forum if that isn't there ?

The spammed claims about five years to solve gets lots of attention.
Lots of continued refutations.
Why - because people want to do that.
Its like refuting flat earth claims.
"Hey - we can refute this."
But the 'chess solved in five years' claimer - like 'flat earth' claimers
never gives in !!  The Show Must Go On ...
So by post 4000 in a few weeks - another 1000-post reiteration perhaps.
Not a complaint - just an observation.  

Chess won't be solved in five years.  Maybe not in five billion years.
But in five years - this forum might still be here.

Maybe in five gazillion years - if humanity is still around 
The number of possible chess positions is Finite.
That really is factual.  Really is binary A or B Correct.

As to chess 'solved in our lifetimes' is that possible ?
Not with pseudologic.
Could it be done if there were good enough algorithms - which can also be called software ?
Not with current software.  Nor with Snake Oil arguments in the software.

The programmers in the table base projects know the difficulties.
If interviewed they might talk about all of them ...
but to admit some things would one need Sodium Pentothal to get the info out of them?
There's this thing called funding and another thing called 'esprit de corps'
But I don't think the difficulties are top secret or involve a 'conspiracy'

But the programmers would have disdain for talking about same.

Ask an astronaut about his trip to the moon -
offer him paid public interviews ...
but if his contract includes having to talk about how difficult manned space travel would be to Alpha Centauri ... (the nearest star to our sun)
possible response:  'I don't know how you're going to get good viewership from that one ...  I'd want a lot more money for that public  interview and if you're smart enough to have that kind of money - you wouldn't pay it anyway.."

I thought the sun was the nearest star. 

Yes it's a great game.

"I thought the sun was the nearest star." 
Alpha Centauri is the nearest star to our sun.

As for travel to the sun - that one also with difficulties.
Heat.

Can't resist this next ...
Two inmates in a psychiatric prison are talking.
"We're going to escape."
Other inmate:  "But where will we go?"
"We're going to steal a spaceship."
Other:  "To go where??"
"To the Sun"
'To the Sun ??  Hey its kind of hot there !"
First inmate:  "Its okay.  We're going to land on it at night".

No I'm not. I'm 137 years old. 1039 next birthday. My son's a maths nerd. In maths, new methods are found as and when they're wanted. It's limitless. With chess though, although the board and number of pieces are finite, the number of possible games is also limitless. I've got  an argument going with someone. I'm saying that chess is really infinite. I'd say only pseudo-finite, which is it pretends to be finite but it isn't. He says it's finite. I think might be someone called btickler. He isn't very bright.

You don't have an argument going with me on this subject...only in your own head. 

I will let the juxtaposition of your bipolar-ish post and my reply speak for itself in terms of who isn't very bright.

Somebody (not btickler) obsessed with his conceptions of intelligence levels again.
He always gravitates back to that.  Its too bad -
because if he could refrain from that and related personalizations - he would be a better poster more likely to be worth reading and replying to.
Apparently its projection and projection of projection - part of forcing him down the same obsessive path.  Year in year out.
Otherwise - he could correct it probably.
Concerns his postings.  Not personal life.  He apparently wants to inform us about that - but others can ignore that and thus avoid personalization from their end.
It all has the effect of making the guy spamming 'five years' ...
look good.  

I deleted my previous post (before @ytgx reply), because it was not accurate and clear enough. The first attempt to post this revised one apparently failed.

About the game-theoretic value, many theorists and players are at least not 100% sure it is a draw, e.g. (emphases mine):

"I think it's almost definite that the game is a draw theoretically" Fischer
"We do not know for a fact that the starting position is a draw, but it does seem like a safe assumption - Rowson 2005.

So there is indeed a "reasonable doubt" that the game is a draw. Apart from that, as I said earlier the modern view on science is that the only real proof is a mathematical proof. But let's assume that we can consider something "scientifically proven" the old way, i.e. a theory is proven, if experiments consistently confirm it. Can we say that it is scientifically proven that the game-theoretic value of chess is a draw? Imo no, because the game-theoretic value is the
best outcome that a player can force. If we don't know for sure that the value is forced, the experiments that we can run (games between more or less strong players) cannot confirm nor contradict the statement. The increasing draw rate in games between engines of the same strength, and in particular in autoplay, can be explained with the increasing stability of the evaluation functions, both because of the introduction of neural networks, and because the evaluations become (on average) more stable with depth.
For this reasons it becomes more and more difficult to overcome an opponent of the same strength, but that does not mean that the game value is a draw. I think that if the increasing drawing rate depended on the game-theoretic value, we should not see the playing strength and ratings of the top engines increase at the current rate.

Now why I insist on that, when I too think that the game value is likely a draw (for other reasons)? Because @tygxc would like to use that value to indirectly prevent the exploration of an awful lot of lines, lines that in fact might disprove the assumption that the game value is a draw. That's not methodologically correct, to say the best. I post again the other parts I deleted earlier.

A scientific proof that a weak solution can be achieved in 5 years is a unicorn, for all the things written so far in this thread.

Definitions and proofs by example.

See above.

Obviously I was saying in general, so the effect of "balanced" or "unbalanced" openings will be generally determined after a weak solution.

Can you see that you repeat things at some point, instead of addressing the objections? "Provability is a higher degree of truth" is an unreferenced, out of the context, ambiguous and unfocused statement. Therefore, it's unacceptable.

It's an estimation, not a proof.

Let's example one of @tygxc's claims. Well, three of them, in italics

The organisers of TCEC each year select 50 slightly unbalanced openings.

So, whatever "balanced" means, these openings aren't it.

1. Most end in double draws and thus are balanced after all.
   Contradicting the assumption made above.
   i.e. if two games from a position are draws the position is "balanced" (whatever that might mean. It doesn't seem to be "draw with perfect play").
2. Some end in double losses and thus are busted.
   Also contradicting the assumption made above.
   i.e. likewise, if a sample of two random games end in losses the position is a loss
3. A few end in a loss and a draw and thus are slightly unbalanced
   Apparently being the only one of the three not to contradict the assumption, but not really.
   i.e. if a small number get different results, the position is definitively not "balanced", because a sample of 2 provides a perfect estimate of the mean value.
   
   There's no need to argue with @tygxc: he contradicts himself every second line. 
   
   Useful observations are that if "balanced" refers to some empirical concept like the expected score (with some given assumptions about the players) then individual results are SAMPLES from a random distribution with the MEAN AVERAGE SCORE being the value to which "balanced" refers. Samples of 2 are not the gold standard in statistics and you can only make weak probabilistic conclusions from such a sample.
   
   

There are actually other better statistics for the 3-value game of chess. The probability of a win for either side is a 2-dimensional statistic which fully describes the statistics of an outcome. Technically this is called a (3-value) multinomial (by analogy with a binomial where there are 2 results.

Here here !

I thought that the portion after my final comment isn't necessary because it just consisted of seemingly unrelated snippets and  I believe we must have shown ty by now that a complete rethink is necessary.

"hear hear!" It's in regard to aurals.

Okay - I read that one.
I'll change the spelling.