Chess will never be solved, here's why

My take on it based on reading none of the past comments is that it will take a supercomputer to solve chess.

Even with pruning there have been positions that have been known to be draws that end up being mate in 546 moves. This would only extend the more pieces there are and while we can say that “nf3” is the best move here we really don’t know (yet) after 30000000000 moves.

Chess have been proven to be decidable and there number of moves are finite making it an EXP Complete problem and the computers we have today could solve it, it would just taking longer than we would exist. Eventually though with a quantum computer where these problems are easier to solve, we will have solved chess

Any other response would be wasted.

@6667

"Supercomputers are about a million times faster than a top end PC"
++ False. A top cloud engine reaches 10^9 nodes/s. A standard desktop reaches 10^6 nodes/s.
That is a factor 1000. So instead of the 3 cloud engines of 10^9 nodes/s each also a cluster of 3000 desktops of 10^6 nodes/s each can do it in 5 years.

That is also how I estimated the cost. In 5 years computers should be written off.
So I calulate 3000 desktops at discount price $500 each = 1.5 million $ to rent the engines.
I calculate the 3 elder grandmasters at 100 k$/a each, thus 1.5 million $ to hire them.
That makes 3 million $ total.

@6673

"it will take a supercomputer to solve chess."
++ It even takes 3 supercomputers during 5 years to weakly solve chess.

"positions that have been known to be draws that end up being mate in 546 moves"
++ Yes, but these long forced mates cannot be forced from the initial position.

"we really don’t know (yet) after 30000000000 moves"
++ We do know. There are only 10^44 legal positions, the vast majority of them stupid.
Now 10^44 = 2^146. So even if there are only 2 choices per move, 146 moves exhaust the number of legal positions. Checkmates with more than 146 moves must contain a string of forced only moves for the defending side. 

"the computers we have today could solve it"
++ Yes, it takes 3 of these 5 years to exhaust the 10^17 relevant positions.

So essentially what we have is a human sitting in front of stockfish saying this or that position is irrelevant so let's not look at it... and they claim this based on their intuition or on how stockfish ranks moves. Using that method you can prune all sorts of positions.

Ok, but this is not what people mean by "solve" chess. Try submitting that to an academic journal "we ignored 99.999...% of positions because, well, obviously."

With sloppy standards like that, anyone could solve chess... they could have solved it 20 years ago.

@6677

"a human sitting in front of stockfish saying this or that position is irrelevant"
++ No, the irrelevant positions are not reached in the course of the solving process.
See e.g. the relevant search space in the figure of Schaeffer's solution of Checkers
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231216842_Checkers_Is_Solved

"Try submitting that to an academic journal we ignored 99.999...% of positions"
++ Read Schaeffer's solution of Checkers: of the 300 tournament openings he calculated only 19. 200 could be eliminated by transposition. 81 were eliminated as irrelevant by pruning.

Sure, I understand there's a difference between weakly solved and solved.

@6679

"I understand there's a difference between weakly solved and solved"
++ Many here still do not understand the difference between weakly and strongly solved.
Checkers has been weakly solved only and with 10^14 relevant positions of the 10^20 legal positions.

Chess can be weakly solved with 10^18 relevant positions. That can be done in 5 years.
Strongly solving Chess i.e. a 32-men table base, would require all 10^44 legal positions, which would take 10^44 nanoseconds of time and 10^44 bits of storage, out of reach now.

How many years have you been saying it "can be done in 5 years"? Does the 5 years start every time you say it again or did it start 5 or 6 years ago?

Because if it starts every time you say it again then the title of this topic is true, it will never be solved. Because 5 years from now will never happen. 

And if you started saying that 3 and a half years ago for example then you should say it "can be done in 18 months". Not 5 years. 

@6681

"Does the 5 years start every time you say it again"
++ No, the 5 years start after funding to hire the 3 grandmasters and rent the 3 cloud engines.

How much does it cost to hire 3 grandmasters? Like a hundred bucks or something? I don't know what 3 cloud engines rent for but it can't be that much. So why hasn't your 5 years happened yet?

@6683

"How much does it cost"
++ I have estimated before:
3 grandmasters * 100,000 $/year/grandmaster * 5 years = 1.5 million $
3 cloud engines = 3000 desktops = 3000 * 500 $            = 1.5 million $
____________________________________________________________________________
Total                                                                                      3    million $

I guess that answers the question. Chess will never be solved. At least doing it that way. 

Seems a lot easier to just figure it's a forced win for white. 

@6685

"it's a forced win for white"
++ No, Chess is a draw. The question is: how exactly to draw as black?

Doubly contrasting, an interesting fact is that a high-end graphics card from 2022 has as much computing power as the top 500 supercomputers in 1994, when the Internet was young.

Amazing that we can cram billions of transistors into such a small space... as well as mass manufacture these units affordably.

No, chess is a forced win for white. The question is, how many moves does it take?

My crazy dead uncle said he could prove chess is a win for white in just 5 years. "He felt that power."

This proves it's true.

And if anyone wants to give me $3 million and wait for 5 years I'll prove it too.

Try running those resources not for 5 years, but 5 billion years. It's a more reasonable estimate, though probably still many-many magnitudes too low.

Papa llama.