Chess will never be solved, here's why

I guess you're going to have a difficult time cheering for the croc for a while.

It's enjoyable for you because it mirrors your own namecalling...er, "style", only with even cruder insults.

 Ipswich refers to the town I was living in when I created my account, not my football allegiance. But I believe you are correct regarding in inferring that Wigan Athletic would currently stand an excellent chance of beating Ipswich Town. 

About three quarters of 7 man endgame classifications contain positions with castling rights. You may not be able to use the tablebases to adjudicate until you reach 3 men.

The only position I posted that I created was the first. The fifty move rule is irrelevant.

This would have done just as well.

It's still mate in 16 and Syzygy still recommends Ka2 which draws in 1.

I'll give you a link for that too 

https://syzygy-tables.info/?fen=8/8/8/8/3k4/8/1R6/K7_w_-_-_39_21

because it's obvious if you're too lazy to click on a link, making your own would be out of the question.

(But SF15 would manage that mate; that's why I put the leading moves into the first version.)

Edit: SF15 still can't manage it in 16, I just tried. Tarrasch/SF15 took 19 moves to mate, but if you play the position as Black against chess.com/sf15 (click on the magnifying glass) you will find it draws in 1 without any tablebase assistance. That's because the chess.com GUI, in common with yourself,  can't tell the difference between a basic rules position and a competition rules game state.

Don't start again or you'll get reported for endless repetition. I suppose you would own up to a namecalling style that's slyer and more devious than the rest of us, who can only watch it in awe and admiration?

Ipswich probably commands the allegiance of most of my family members on my dad's side, who settled around Bury St Edmunds in the 1930s. Generally called Chapman.

I like to see Newcastle and Wigan win. I don't like to see West Ham and Spurs win, among others. Used to hate Chelsea and ManU but who didn't. 

Let's be clear here. This is not an objective disagreement (the interesting kind). It is a worthless semantic disagreement. "Worthless" because if you avoid using the same word for two different things, there is no disagreement.  Those who contribute to the peer-reviewed literature say chess is too complex to solve. You and @tygxc say "no, let's change the meaning of solve, and then we can say we can solve it". Using the same word for two different things and then failing to acknowledge you are doing this is obfuscation, and its only contribution to objective knowledge is to make it more difficult to communicate about it.

A concrete example is 1. e4 e5 2. Ba6.  Regarding the weak solution of chess (same meaning as the entire peer-reviewed literature), this is an unproven case requiring proof if this position can be reached from either of the two candidate strategies.

All of us agree it is very likely a win for white. Some don't understand that it be an excellent bet - maybe  one you could stake your life on - but not epistemiologically justifying certainty. They erroneously think that induction from the tiny amount of existing chess praxis by flawed humans and engine including, say, an evaluation of 500 centipawns (like many positions that are not won) and a LeelaZero evaluation of 99.8% (or whatever it is) is enough to be certain. No, it ain't. Maybe you could stake your like on it, but staking your life on 10^20 such examples all being correct would be suicidal.

Honestly Elroch, I promise you. Your grasp of the entire thing is on very dodgy ground. It is you who have hold of the wrong end of the stick and have an overly simplistic mindset.

I'm afraid that you're misrepresenting my argument because you probably do not understand it.

Those who contribute to the peer-reviewed literature say chess is too complex to solve. You and @tygxc say "no, let's change the meaning of solve, and then we can say we can solve it". 

That is a ludicrous misrepresentation. I think I was the first person discussing this subject to arrive at the firm conclusion that chess is insoluble. I've been stating that consistently for several months and others have started to come round to that way of thinking since I explained my reasoning.

I'm afraid that you don't seem to be able to get away from tygxc's "solved in 5 years" thing and you automatically imagine that everything he says is therefore wrong and even those who agree with him are therefore wrong. I am very clear that chess cannot be solved at all, more than likely. My thinking is ahead of other people here and always has been. Especially those who continue meaningless arguments about numbers when it is clear that the numbers show in any case that chess is insoluble. But also, those who talk in terms of strategies without knowing what they mean are equally going round in circles, with no prospect at all of a resolution. When you speak of stratagies and can't even define those strategies meanigfully and usefully, then it's hopeless.

You or anyone has to get out of the endless circle of trying to reason deductively about something regarding which there is insufficient information to do so and to try to start to think constructively, which means trying to think from the pov of a scientist, rather than a theoretician.

The correct method, if an attempt is to be made to solve chess, is first to try to develop a theoretical understanding of points of flux in chess games. That is, points of tension which are complex and where small variations can mean the difference between winning and losing. I would call them positional-tactical melees, perhaps, where tactics can change the positional sense of a game. They need to focus entirely on that aspect of chess for several years and try to build a store of pattern tranformation recognition. Are you with me? Then they need to try to perfect algorithms dealing with just those game aspects and no others. Gradually, over time, it will be seen that the understanding of the influence of tactical exchanges becomes more wide-reaching. I think that solving chess is hampered by the existing focus on entire games. Maybe I should contact @Caproni, to see what he thinks of my idea. If he says that there's a problem with my thinking, then I'll believe him, because I would know he would have thought it through.

@Optimissed re:

That is a ludicrous misrepresentation.

Certainly what @tygxc says at any rate. In your case it should be "let's change the meaning of solve, and then we can still say we can't solve it".

Chess is solved in the sense that we know it's drawn. However, the real meaning of "solution", which we're discussing here, is an analysis of the entire set of meaningful chess lines.

For some reason I'm not sure of, there's a lot of emphasis here on "the best moves against any opposition". That is true in a sense. It should go without saying that the strongest moves have to be analysed thoroughly but there has to come a point where chess lines that are effectively random and losing can be recognised as that, rather than pursuing all variants of such lines to their bitter end. There should be no need for that and indeed, random moves aren't chess. Unexpectedly good moves are chess and algorithms are needed to prune the search tree, to cut off all the unnecessary stuff. It's at this point that you are getting yourselves tied up in knots, because it's known that existing algorithms are not fully reliable. tygxc thinks they're reliable and much of this conversation is an entirely pointless and unproductive repetition of arguments that shouldn't be required.. Unfortunately, there are some people who enjoy going round and round in circles and others who seem to enjoy complaining about it.

Most of the people who do join these conversations, who actually understand what's being discussed, give up in disgust.

Well you still haven't shown us your win as Black against SF after 1.e4 e5 2.Ba6. Why don't you do that first before continuing to post that you can tell what lines are random and losing.

It would give you some credibility.

If you could do it against something that can mate with a rook and king against a lone king that would be even better, but let's see how you do against SF first.

No-one needs credibility with a troll and anyone who can't work out that 1. e4 e5 2. Ba6 definitely loses for white basically doesn't have the chess or logical ability to comment here. It isn't a grey area. It loses and one doesn't need to prove it, although tygxc claims it's been proven.

To put you straight, there are grey areas where a proof is needed but that isn't one of them, since saying it might not lose is just as silly as saying 1. e4 might lose by force. I used that argument with Elroch and I think he made some inept comment which I didn't bother to read. I'll read it now but my argument by a comparison with an inverse case is perfectly good. Obviously it's opinion but if so then so is the opinion that 1. e4 doesn't lose by force.

Until you solve chess, that argument obviously holds.

This is Elroch's effort. The same thing again about 10^20 "such examples". We're not talking about 10^20 "such examples", Elroch ... we're talking about that specific example, so who is currently living in fantasy land? Do you think that 1. d4 might lose by force? You'd really be forced to think that, if you think 1. e4 e5 2. Ba6 might not lose.