Chess will never be solved, here's why

I didn't understand the post you're referring to. I try not to understand horsesh*t, otherwise I'd finish up as sane as you.

You had made a statement I happened to agree with, but without any cogent argument in support.

I made, in fact, a very minor point about the shambles of rules laid out in the FIDE laws.

Well, I have to say that I'm pleased to see politeness restored somewhere between Posts 5575 and 5577.  

It isn't anything to do with FIDE laws, although we're in agreement about FIDE, which I think is a waste of space. You don't understand my posts because you aren't capable of it, because you've lost the deductive ability you once had. You demonstrated that by getting the intuitive bit and completely missing the rest. Mind you, this thread is mainly just a club for the dispossessed.

I'm not sure whether that was self-preferential or self-referential but the difference is only a "p". No queues in this site. The delays are always at our end.

Anyway, that was contorted but we got here in the end.

Steinitz - "I can give God pawn and move and still win"

Since all statements by world chess champions are true (@tygxc assures me) the conclusion is clear.

It could be that tygxc's conclusion is incorrect. There's a very tricky syllogistic chain, leading uniquely to that.

Your proposal makes some assumptions I don't accept:

     Chess is inherently a draw. Ignoring ICCF won/lost games because "there must have a mistake" could miss a line of play that would indicate chess could be a win.

     That the "good assistants" could pinpoint the only three viable alternatives, and thinking there could only be three alternative moves. 

     Thinking the good assistants will always be correct in their assessment of what will be the "obvious" result. 

     Believing that present-day machines and programming cannot be relegated to "the dustbin of history" by any revolutionary advances that would make your five million years of calculation a joke.

     Again, just because I, or tygxc, or you, or Sveshnikov believes that chess is inherently a draw does NOT make it so. Starting with the idea that chess is a draw and achieving "not a proof or an attempted proof" but simply a reinforcement of our opinions is essentially worthless.

     If you had read the post you would realize that it was tygxc that used the phrase 'five million years" to pooh-pooh my belief that a more reliable proof is possible in the long run.

You're missing the point, which is that ty's project obviously doesn't lead to a proof. You should probably concentrate more and stop talking down to people. I talk down to people only when they make silly mistakes and still assume that I'm the one who's mistaken; and only then if they're insulting and angry as you often tend to be these days. All you're doing is repeating my opinion, angrily.

     If we are not discussing whether chess can be determined to be inherently won/lost or is drawn, then the OP solved the issue with his observation that as a practical matter chess is already "solved" as a competitive endeavor by the most successful players--what they (man or machine) do is the best chess. He goes on to posit that no algorithms or computer analysis can change that. It would seem that under those criteria the Sveshnikov proposition would do no more to "solve"  the game than Capablanca has already achieved.

     Therefore the ensuing 5588 entries here are just a waste of time.

Yes and this isn't the only thread there's been on the subject. I'm finding it more interesting than I imagined I would. I think that's due to a bundle of things. I used to be very intersted in computers and progtramming, as a hobby, so that's one thing. I like the combination of deductive and intuitive thought it demands and it's slowly rekindling my old interest. I also think I'm intrigued by the combination of people discussing the subject in this thread, partly because I think there's some dysfunctionality. Normal people probably wouldn't discuss it for the best part of a year, so why? I've also always been interested in writing, itself; and this gives me the opportunity to see how different styles trigger different responses. I still haven't given up the idea of writing a novel, if I'm ever motivated enough to do so. I started one once in the mid 80s and sent it off to a literary agent. She lost it and when I didn't hear anything, I had developed different interests. Then she contacted me telling me she'd lost it and then found it and she wanted me to complete it but by then my life was very different. And these discussions are a welcome distraction from what I've been doing this last couple of weeks, which is sorting out a lot of physical things.

I would call that a "nugget"......

@5585

"Chess is inherently a draw." ++ Yes. There is massive evidence: expert options, ICCF, TCEC, AlphaZero, human games, and the deductive argument that an advantage of 1 tempo < 1 pawn is insufficient to win: you cannot queen a tempo.

"Ignoring ICCF won/lost games because "there must have a mistake" could miss a line of play that would indicate chess could be a win." ++ If you look at decisive ICCF WC Finals games, it is always possible to pinpoint the mistake, usually the last move.

"That the "good assistants" could pinpoint the only three viable alternatives"
++ It is not the good assistants, but the engine that pinpoint the 3 best alternatives once the calculation is running. The good assistants only launch the calculation, i.e. set up the tabiya and they occasionally terminate a calculation e.g. in case of a clear draw.

"thinking there could only be three alternative moves"
++ I previously calculated that, extrapolating from the AlphaZero autoplay paper.
The table base best move is always among the 4 top engine moves if the 10^9 positions /s engine runs for 17 s except for 1 error in 10^20 positions.
You can verify that by setting up a KRPP vs. KRP endgame and letting your desktop run for 4.7 h.

 "good assistants will always be correct in their assessment of what will be the "obvious" result."
++ The good assistants only occasionally intervene and only if they are sure.
ICCF (grand)masters do not resign drawn positions or draw in won positions.

"Believing that present-day machines and programming cannot be relegated to "the dustbin of history" by any revolutionary advances"
++ Engines get better. Their error rate goes down. You can see that in TCEC. ICCF WC Finals games now have less errors and thus less decisive games than 10 years ago.

Quantum computers hold the potential to advance in table bases: from 7 to 8, to 9 men...

The idea that you the top three choices of an engine always include a best move is laughable.

Not for the foreseeable future they don't.

If it's competitive and with humans, no. Why? Because humans aren't computers. People always say "best move", in videos, but not everyone plays the "best move", because a "best move" is only a "best move", if you know that the next move, is also the "best move". I don't ever hear anyone talk about this. Chess engines are very great and good to use and helpful, but they aren't helpful when you don't have them and it's move 36 and you have a clock going down and you've never seen this position before because your opponent is in the same boat as you on move 34. To me this is obvious. I guarantee there are moves that GMs don't understand in certain position that an engine recommends on a given move in a game and it's a game that started off on some "Normal line". Also, another thing that bugs me is that if chess hasn't been 100% been solved, than how can us humans say a move is a blunder when we have to admit we haven't solved chess. Computer engines have recommended moves that we call a blunder, yet chess engines are better than humans. Sooo... Is it really a blunder by definition by the computer? Because back to my first point, you have to KNOW that your opponents next move will be the best one. But the problem is... How can we humans say a move is the best move, when chess engines haven't solved chess? Also, all players, even GMs play different according to their emotions at some point because humans aren't perfect, which makes chess interesting. There is no best moves guys, just like there is no spoon. Anyone else know what I'm talking about? That was a good poop.

@5593
"The idea that you the top three choices of an engine always include a best move"
++ Not the top 3, but the top 4.
Starting from a drawn ICCF WC Finals game, there are 3 alternatives to each move. 3 + 1 = 4.
I arrived at the 4 by extrapolating from the AlphaZero autoplay paper.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.04374 Figure 2.
At 1 s / move: 88.2% draws, 11.8% decisive
At 1 min / move: 97.9% draws, 2.1% decisive
Extrapolating:
At 1 h / move: 2.1% * 2.1% / 11.8% = 0.37% decisive
At 60 h / move: 0.37% * 2.1% / 11.8% = 0.067% decisive
60 h / move on the engine of the paper corresponds to 17 s on an engine of a billion positions/s
Assuming game length 37 moves: average of ICCF WC Finals: 1 error in 10^5 positions.
Thus for 4 moves: 1 error in (10^5)^4 = 10^20 positions.

You can verify this.
Take a KRPP vs. KRP position, run it for 17000 s = 4.7 h on a desktop.
Verify the table base exact move is among the top 4 engine moves.

@5596
"how can us humans say a move is a blunder"
++ We have ample evidence that chess is a draw. Thus each decisive game must contain an odd number of mistakes, at least 1. By inspection it is possible to identify at least 1 mistake.

"How can we humans say a move is the best move"
++ We cannot, except for positions with 7 men or less, which have been strongly solved.
We also have statistical evidence. We can say that all the moves of a drawn game in the ICCF world championship finals are > 99% certain to be optimal moves.
For example all moves in this game https://www.iccf.com/game?id=1164259 are > 99% sure to be optimal moves. There is < 1% probability that there are 2 mistakes that undo each other.

Correct. This is just speculation at the moment. Like pretty much all of @tygxc's "conclusions".

One ridiculous estimate is that only 10^17 positions will need to be examined. Let's consider the last TCEC superfinal games - https://live.chessbase.com/en/Games?id=TCEC-Season-22---Superfinal

The average length of these games (with both sides having free access to a tablebase) is 74 moves. If all analysis games were the same length, a branching factor (adjusted for transposition) of 3 would give 2x10^35 positions. Even a branching factor of 2 would give more than 10^22 positions. As it happens this is a systematic underestimation, because the game lengths go up to 135 moves and the longer games greatly dominate the size of the position tree for reasons that are (hopefully) obvious.

[To illustrate, the average from 1 to 135 of 2^n is 6.45e38]