Chess will never be solved, here's why

I apologised because you were being positive and all I was doing was continuing an argument, and it came straight after your post so I believed I owed you an apology, whoever you are.. I haven't read his rejoinder and I'm not reading any of his posts from now on, because it isn't worth my time. I've been working for the past few hours and decided not to respond any more to the people who don't get it. They had their chance. Just hopeless.

#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.

Okay, so that leaves with 10^41 positions.  What's your next step?

I know.

I was rather figurative.

I have read about the checkers solution, "Losing Chess" would be a waste of time.  Checkers reduced from ~10^20 down to 10^14.  And the solution did not just use the Chinook engine.  So, naturally, that means you can just go from 10^44 to 10^17 for chess and use only Stockfish ...

You're all three wrong in your different ways.

When asked to give a reason why I shouldn't be able to know that chess is drawn, haiuku couldn't get past the idea of "because it's unknown". When asked what could cause the equalising tendency in chess to mysteriously reverse, the answer was "because Relativity wasn't predicted". When told that there's no comparison because chess is a defined and finite system **in the way it operates as opposed to the search tree**, there was the verbal equivalent of a blank stare.

tygxc believes that anyone disagreeing with the definitions of the technical jargon he prefers to employ is showing they don't understand it, even though he's shown that he never even attempts to understand things he didn't know, preferring to reject them. I include tygxc here because although he also thinks chess is drawn, his confused ideas on the subject and an insistence that "the definitions are good" make it difficult.

bickler is a tricky combination of both of them, who cherry-picks what he wants, to win arguments he wants to engage with, for whatever reason; and constantly deflects and avoids good arguments, meaning that he doesn't engage. Instead, a constant engagement with tygxc means that he avoids the discussion proper and that seems to be a deliberate strategy, aimed at giving an impression rather than producing anything substantial.

No-one has shown that I am not reasonably entitled to believe that I know that chess is drawn with best play. One might remark that there was no proper opposition and that a contrary argument could be better represented by cleverer people. But I can assure you (anyone who is so bored that they're reading this) that a discussion with more able people would mean that there was a good chance chance of them understanding and perhaps agreeing with at least some of the points I've raised.

When the opponent disagrees with everything, that seems to be a childish technique, tending to demonstrate that the discussion goes above the head. Disagreement with everything implies, in practice, understanding of very little. So the argument has been concluded, as far as I'm concerned. No-one here has shown that I cannot know, without doubt, that chess is drawn with best play.

Does any of us actually need to be here for any of this fantasizing?  Please clean up after you are done...

It didn't take you long to think up one of your perfect ripostes. Trouble is, that's all you can do. There's very little, otherwise.

Here's a game I just played: the second I've played today. The first one, my opponent blundered in the opening and I tried an approach I hadn't tried before but it seemed drawn and I continued to push and hung a piece in a difficult ending. But I always allow myself a loss to start with. This one was more fun from my point of view as black, played at 5/5.

This is a tremendous advance in chess theory. All through history, chess players have believed that sacrifices were sometimes valid and you have refuted those centuries of chess knowledge by the sheer power of assertion.

More generally, until now it has been believed that "proof by assertion" is a fallacy, and now you have raised it to a valid reasoning technique!

Imagine the things that can be achieved by this approach. Inspired by your lead, I have managed to both prove and disprove the Riemann hypothesis in the space of a minute. This proved mathematics to be inconsistent but then I saved the day by declaring it to be consistent!

There is something VERY wrong with this site. ^^^^^^^^^

I think that's evidence that they haven't quite got the programming of this site quite right as yet, despite their best efforts. Definitely a Major Glitch! Atten .... shun!!

I wrote:

Because their previous abilities, whatever they were, have waned. It's an assertion of past glories, psychologically. Of my adversaries here, Elroch is the only one to keep his eye on the ball, continuing to make a good impression.