Chess will never be solved, here's why

#3989

"I think that the terminology is complete nonsense" ++ I am sorry, that is the scientific terminology in the game theory field. I explained in layman's terms for your convenience.

"we disagree, therefore you do not understand" ++ People disagree because they do not understand. They should read and think before disagreeing. People are better at slinging insults and accusations than at reading and understanding.

"reading yours and btickler's correspondence with each other, it's apparent that you're talking past each other"  ++ btickler does not understand the difference between weakly and strongly solving, that is why about weakly solving he erroneously uses the number for strongly solving.

"the terminology, which is not fit for purpose. Its purpose should be to convey meaning."
++ The terminology is fit for purpose, it applies to any game, not just chess, but it is intended for scientific readers. That is why I have added an explanation in layman's terms and specific to chess for your convenience. 

You've already written a criticism of the terms long ago.  It got the attention it deserved then, as well.  Take the hint.  Everyone gets that you don't like the nomenclature chosen.  It's not the greatest.  It is sound, however, and I am sure there is some evolutionary reason for the clumsiness of the terms for the average reader.

I just understand that all your shortcuts require determinations to reduce the 10^44 positions that are going to be roughly equivalent to just traversing the positions, say plus or minus a handful of orders of magnitude at best.

You don't seem to get this.  Your arbitrary reductions will require a massive amount of computation to apply your arbitrary criteria to each position simply to eliminate it from consideration.  Worse, at the end, your "good enough" shortcuts will produce a flawed answer that will not be accepted as a solution anyway.  Like building a house out of 2x4s and then staple-gunning cardboard for walls, then trying to sell it for a million dollars.

You can produce *something* in 5 years...but not a solution for chess.  More like a watered down attempt at a forward moving tablebase to meet the retrograde analysis in the middle.  The forward moving attempt will summarily eliminate valid positions in order to get around the fact that you are not working backwards from mate, which by force culls all of the invalid positions for you.  Not so for your ill-conceived plan.  What you propose would make engines stronger players, but the results would not even come close to being a solution for chess.

You don't have to believe me.  The proof is and will continue to be in the lack of anyone who knows how to build such systems paying the slightest attention to your plan.

I think the more I read this thread the more obvious the reason chess will never be solved is people cant even agree on what we want "solved" to mean XD.  Though I'm sure each and everyone can tell you exactly why how they feel about it is "the correct way".  The older I get the more "truth" seems to be as malleable as "morality". Fun thread to read though lots of nested philosophical ideas and such applicable to other arguments. When people cant even agree on operable definitions for the words used in the arguments you know its finna be a good time XD. 

We need Speedtalk.

What is that supposed to mean? The lines that no one has explored down to the tablebases yet, are unkown elements. You are excluding a priori that one, any one, of those lines may falsify the assumption that the game value is a draw.

"Equalising tendency" is too ambiguous. We could only say: 
1) S is a set of positions known to be draws;  
2) if both players play optimal moves from the inital position, it is possible to reach only positions belonging to S;
3) therefore, the initial position is a draw too. 
But then the question would be: how do we know that the positions in S are draws? How can we prove statement 2?

Where do you read "computer-assisted" in my statement? The point is: how do you know that a statement holds true in any possible case, without an exhaustive proof that the statment holds true in any possible case? Because of a tendency? It would be inductive reasoning, overgeneralization. It is good for hypotheses, but not for conclusions.

But that's exactly the argument you are trying to refute: conceiving the "unconceivable".

You and tygxc are about absolute knowledge. To me the only real proof is an exhaustive one, but it might be impossible to achieve that in practice, not only in case of computer-assisted proofs. If one million mathematicians do all agree that T is a theorem, they might all be mistaken. If we all see the sun rise, we might all be hallucinated.
Seriously, true scientists are skeptical in nature: they are aware that they can be biased and that what may seem universal can be in fact just a special case; it's already happened. What makes the difference between scientists and non-scientists is the level of accuracy, universality and stability of the conclusions, they seek. This make them use mathematical models of course, they try to falsify statements, they reproduce experiments, seek agreement with other scientists, etc.
A statement like "chess is a draw because of the equalizing tendency" really cannot be considered scientific, or nearly as reliable as a computer-assisted proof by exhaustion.

The King of Projection speaks.

The fact that you can never seem to muster anything but crude insults tells the real story.  At every reply, I respond with civil discourse and observation, and you end up turning to one word insults, being unable to operate at the same level.  It's a tired refrain.

 "you think that's air your breathing right now?" Suffice to say I don't think we are gonna agree on what tasty wheat tastes like.  Whether we point to god or science as an authority people can still choose not to subscribe to either.  Still a fun thought experiment 

Sorry for what I didn't take offense to anything you have said?  I do think maybe its not worth either of your time with the back and forth can have some fun semantical debates without getting upset with one another I think. 

Maybe you need to read your own posts.  But of course, in Opti-land, saying that nobody in the thread is anywhere near your mental ability is just a statement of fact and not an insult to everybody here, right?  So when you review your behavior, it's all statements of "facts" by you about being superior, and ergo insults only come from other quarters.  Is that about the size of it?

You are the bull in the china shop.

Delusional thinking.  It's your defining characteristic.

"IQ"?

Isn't that something kids get measured to give a hint of their potential to develop other skills that are more substantial than doing little puzzles?

Also something narcissists tend to exaggerate.

The quoted text is more substantial than the comment. It points out that there is a proof that an optimum strategy exists for games in a class including chess (I think the full description is finite, deterministic games of perfect information, all defined in texts. They left determinism implicit), and refers to the established name of the theorem. It also draws attention to the fact that there are three logical possibilities and what they are.

Note "perfect information" and "deterministic", as conventionally defined, are independent. While poker is neither, other games can be one but not the other. You could transform a game where the state was visible but the result of actions uncertain to one where the state was uncertain and the uncertain part of the state was what altered the effect of actions, so maybe they are being cleverer than me and realising you can do without the additional category.

What's amazing is that the 10^120 fact that everyone throws around doesn't even scratch the surface of every possible chess position... The famous 10^120 positions assumes a game that goes on for exactly 40 moves. Considering the fact that with the 50 moves draw rule the actual longest possible chess game is several thousand moves, you can only imagine how many orders of magnitude higher the actual number of chess positions are. Maybe something like 10^200 which is a number almost impossible to imagine

#3922
"Maybe something like 10^200 which is a number almost impossible to imagine"
++ Please do not produce such nonsense.
It has been proven there are 10^44 legal chess positions
https://github.com/tromp/ChessPositionRanking

It is obvious the three sample positions make no sense.
A better estimate thus is 10^37
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.09386.pdf

The number needed to weakly solving chess is much smaller.
Losing Chess has been solved using 10^9 positions.
http://magma.maths.usyd.edu.au/~watkins/LOSING_CHESS/LCsolved.pdf 

#3901
"rubbish" "they can't think straight" "completely dumb" "people of low ability"
++ Why if you are rated 2500 in debating you have to sling insults like a toddler?
"See how I put the definitions into plainer English."
++ Like a a translator with perfect conduct of English, but no clue about the subject. 
Why with IQ 170 you cannot appreciate that the definitions are carefully worded so as to apply to all cases? This is just hubris. This emeritus professor van den Herik is completely dumb, of low ability, cannot think straight and writes rubbish. I Optimissed will rewrite it so that it makes no sense whatsoever.
The same with chess being weakly solvable in 5 years. When Sveshnikov, grandmaster, 65+ world champion, author of books, professional chess analyst, MSc. Eng. near the end of his life says in an interview chess can be weakly solved in 5 years, you coud at least listen and think instead of outright dismissing it on no grounds at all.

Exactly.

99.7% of all possible positions are not relevant.

#3905

"I just understand that all your shortcuts require determinations to reduce the 10^44 positions "
++ No, there are no determinations needed at all. Only a tiny fraction of the 10^44 legal positions shows up during the solving process. Losing Chess has been weakly solved with only 10^9 positions not 10^44.
Look at the 3 sampled positions counted into the 10^44
https://github.com/tromp/ChessPositionRanking
It is clear that errors must have been made to reach those positions.

"Your arbitrary reductions will require a massive amount of computation to apply your arbitrary criteria to each position simply to eliminate it from consideration."
++ You still do not get it. I do not apply criteria and I do not need any computation to reduce positions, they just do not show up during the solution.

"More like a watered down attempt at a forward moving tablebase to meet the retrograde analysis in the middle." ++ That is how Checkers and Losing Chess have been weakly solved.
Have you read how they have done it?
http://magma.maths.usyd.edu.au/~watkins/LOSING_CHESS/LCsolved.pdf

https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~dprecup/courses/AI/Materials/checkers_is_solved.pdf 
They did not start from the set of legal positions and then reduced that. They started from the initial position and then calculated towards the table base and at the end they had weakly solved it and then they counted they had visited 10^14 resp 10^9 positions in the process.

"you are not working backwards from mate" ++ I am not trying to strongly solve chess and compile a 32-men table base, that is not feasible.

#3927

"99.7% of all possible positions are not relevant."
++ Only 10^17 positions of the 10^44 legal positions are relevant.
That is 1 position in 10^27 positions.
  0.0000000000000000000000001% of legal positions is relevant.
99.9999999999999999999999999% of legal positions is irrelevant.

Do you think. The confidence of 1/80 will do? 

#3911

"The lines that no one has explored down to the tablebases yet, are unkown elements."
++ Many positions with more men than 7 are known draws or losses as well.
Many endgames with opposite colored bishops are known draws.
Many positions with huge material differences like a queen up are known wins.

"how do we know that the positions in S are draws?"
++ For all positions of 7 men or less and even some positions with 8 men it is known from the table base. For some endgames like opposite colored bishops it is known from analysis. For some middlegame positions with huge imbalance it is known from experience and from logic.

"you have no reason to believe that there will ever be a reliable proof." ++ A matter of money.

"All analyses will be impossible to check." ++ And for Checkers and Losing Chess?

"To me the only real proof is an exhaustive one" ++ Connect Four has been solved independently in two different ways: an exhaustive one by Allen and a set of 7 rules by Allis.
I believe weakly solving chess will be a combination of both.

"If one million mathematicians do all agree that T is a theorem, they might all be mistaken."
++ This has been heavily debated for the Four Color Theorem, but in the end it was agreed.

"A statement like "chess is a draw because of the equalizing tendency" really cannot be considered scientific, or nearly as reliable as a computer-assisted proof by exhaustion."
++ That is vague.
However: white is 1 tempo up, experience shows 3 tempi are worth 1 pawn, 1 pawn is enough to win a game by queening it, 1 tempo is not enough to win, makes sense.

Also: 1 e4 e5 2 Ba6 white is a bishop down. A bishop is worth 3 pawns. A bishop is enough to win. 1 e4 e5 2 Ba6 is a win for black. That is without an exhaustive calculation to checkmate in all lines.