Chess will never be solved, here's why

@7528

"Suppose that we have a unit which measures whether a games' position is a win, loss, or draw. Anything above 1 is a tablebase win by definition, anything below -1 is a tablebase loss by definition. Anything in between is a tablebase draw by definition."
++ We can suppose existence of such a unit, but such a unit does not exist unless it calculates to the 7-men endgame table base. However, good humans can indentify some positions as clear draws or clear losses, all other positions needing calculation.

"If both players play the best moves, the evaluation stays the same." ++ Of course.

"If one player is an Oracle who plays the best moves but the other blunders slightly"
++ You cannot blunder slightly. A move is an error or not, changes the game state or not.

"the score should drift more and more in favor of the tablebase player"
++ The score stays 1/2 as long as no error is made.

"But possibly not enough to convert the advantage to a win." ++ No possible win = draw.

"if a position is +25 centiwins, and you make a slight inaccuracy,
it could be +15 centiwins, or -30, or -200, but making best moves keeps it at +25 centiwins."
++ There are no centiwins, only draw, win, loss.

"we can model a game as a sort of random walk and its win/loss/draw state as the evaluation position after 100 moves"
++ After 100 moves the exact draw / win / loss of the table base is reached.

"The ELO difference is larger even if the difference in blunder size is the same."
++ Elo difference translates in number of errors, not in size of errors. An error is an error.

"Chess does not end at 100 moves"
++ It does reach the 7-men endgame table base before 100 moves: 42 moves average.
Moreover, a random walk with 4 non-transposing choices per move after 100 moves reaches 4^100 = 10^60 positions, that is more than the 10^44 legal positions, so Chess ends before 100 moves.

"Not trading down material."
++ Kings, Queens, Bishops, and Knights are stronger when in the center.
Putting these in the center compels to trade. Rooks are equally strong on any square,
that is why their trade can be avoided and why rook endings occur most.
Many rook endgames are draws even 1 or sometimes even 2 pawns down,
so not trading down rooks is indeed a valid drawing strategy.

"Thinking a pawn advantage in the opening is winning when you actually need a piece"
++ A pawn is enough to win. The plan is to queen the pawn.
A piece is enough to win. The plan is to trade it for a pawn.

"you need a pawn to win when you just need 2 tempi in the opening"
++ Yes a pawn is a win. A pawn equals 3 tempi.
White can afford to lose 2 tempi, black can afford to lose 1 tempo.

"data on blunder severity"
++ There is no blunder severity, but there are data on number of errors per game.

@7523

"Alpha go has cost over 35 million dollars"
++ Yes, but AlphaZero and Stockfish have been developed already, so are available.
Schaeffer had to develop Chinook. Also the 7-men engame table base is available.
Schaeffer had to develop his endgame table base, and that took up most of his work.

"We don’t yet have a pruning algorithm able to reduce the chess calculations to a reasonable number, whereas there was one for checkers"
++ Schaeffer used Chinook for Checkers. In the same way Stockfish can be used for Chess.
Use Stockfish to prune black moves down to 1. Justification will come after reaching the 7-men endgame table base. Use Stockfish to prune white moves down to a reasonable number e.g. 4.
If necessary an additional verification can follow.

Trying too hard and getting flustered is not a good look for you.  You don't actually "know know" how every one feels, your "on the other hand" doesn't really qualify as one, and you can't decide if your attempted comeback is better using "professional" or "quack".  Your rationalization about people staying silent is pretty flimsy, and that's being kind.  All in all, not an effort to be proud of...stay centered and focus on what you want to say, take your time, and when you think you have it, take a second pass looking for discernible desperation on your part, and remove it.  This will make your arguments more cogent and confident.

I'll check back later.  No need to rush your reply...and avoid your usual string of "and another thing" follow ons.  Also a bad look.

@tygxc has had 5 hours to solve that question but dismally failed.

Hands up those who think in 5 years he will solve chess.

Some people try to use forced twins in 549 moves from such positions as an indication that chess isn't drawn with best play; and of course they don't take into account that the position shown is completely unbalanced even though roughly equal in force.

Do they?

I just use it to comment on @tygxc's "proof" that no chess game can last longer than 100 moves.

Doesn't advance a solution of chess much, I admit.

Hoping to cut down on @tygxc's manure rate. Don't know what we can do about yours.

@7541

"1. We have no way of every knowing how long a chess game last we perfect play."
++ We have. We have perfectly played ICCF WC draws and on average they end after 42 moves.

2. We have no way of every knowing is chess is a win, loss, or draw with perfect play. 
++ We have. We have perfectly played ICCF WC draws.
A tempo in the initial position is not enough to win.
A tempo cannot queen, a pawn can.
A pawn in the initial position is worth 3 pawns as we know from gambits.

If ICCF players have already solved chess then there's no need to wait 5 years with a supercomputer and Sveshnikov's ghost. 

That's a useful rule of thumb for practical play in opening positions. It's obviously not a rigorous game theoretic value.

S'cuse me. I didn't start my argument with any assumption about the theoretical result.

1. We do know how long a chess game can last with legal play under some sets of rules. 

Under FIDE basic rules since 2017 or FIDE rules prior to 2017 there is no finite limit, ℵ₀ can be taken as the minimal (unachievable) limit. Under FIDE competition rules since 2017 it's exactly 8849 White moves.

2. We have no way at the moment of knowing if chess is a win, loss, or draw with perfect play. Indeed you'ld need to alter the FIDE laws for the question to even make sense.

That doesn't mean there is no way of ever knowing (but the answer may be different depending on which set of rules is settled on).

The question doesn't arise in my post, because I'm not talking about perfect play, only legal play.

If you can tell what the error rates are you must have solved chess.

Congratulations - beat @tygxc by five years + the time he's going to take to con someone out of $3M (which could be about the same as a genuine solution might take).

If you want an idea of how SF15 compares with Rybka/Nalimov - which is not just perfect, but also perfectly accurate from the position below - you could always ask Coach, because SF15 is what he uses to decide.

Not sure how you're scoring, but I assume it's based on SF15.

IF using SF15 gives perfectly accurate play (as in Black Rybka/Nalimov in the example I posted) a CAPS2 score of 66.9 that might suggest the best play we have today from the best chess engine we have today is actually not very good (while recognising that anything else that plays without tablebases is considerably worse).

And to compare Carlsen to SF, you should ask both Carlsen and SF if you want an unbiased result. If you just ask SF, it's likely to agree with itself whether it's right or not.

See?  Much better.  You should follow my advice more often.  If people didn't know it was you, this would sound relatively normal.

Chess engines don't uniformly improve necessarily.

I practice KNN v KP quite a lot against engines.

I had a version of Rybka specially strengthened for endgame play about 20 years ago that could reliably do White mates in 50 (though not usually in 50 moves). No version of SF can; the limit is about 36. Also SF12 is considerably weaker at that endgame than SF11 and weaker than SF8. 

ICCF players are like lab assistants.  They run around between engines gathering results and pick the best one.  Occasionally they remind the engines to check a line the engines had been ignoring..."you missed this test tube over here".

I don't understand that conclusion.

Can you give some more detail. What, exactly, do you mean by, "played/analyzed in retrograde"?

In the interest of actually helping you, I will point out that light hearted withdrawal does work, but if you post 3 times in succession, it belies the nonchalance you are attempting to project.  I have some UK coinage left over, I'll swap with you the next time I am going from London to Fort William.

When computers beat consistently  the best human players, chess is solved, more difficult for the GO game though...

No problem. Just describe in detail the steps that were performed to produce your figures for SF and MC, so we can understand what they represent.

Just saying, "retrograde analysis", isn't enough for that. It could lead to a Nalimov tablebase, a Syzygy tablebase or one of Marc B.'s DTC tablebases or the figures you included in your post. I'm interested in what the last are. 

Just as when cars manage to go faster than the best human runners we can say we've cracked warp drive.