Chess will never be solved, here's why

@5946
"Syzygy is a strong solution of 7 man chess"
++ Syzygy or Nalimov, do not care. 7-men chess is strongly solved.
You seem really obsessed with the 50-moves rule.
The 50-moves rule plays no role in solving chess.
It is just a practical rule to prevent games to last too long.

Why the games should be of interest to you is precisely that the positions are weakly (btw not strongly) solved. You can therefore veryify or disprove the correctness of the method used in your calculations using the solution.

You have claimed that your calculations show the theoretical result of the starting position just from the results of a set of games played from that position. Your calculations should not therefore require that a position is drawn to work.

You also say that the occurrence of blunders in a game is a poisson process so independent of position. It should not therefore apply to only KRPPvKRP positions. Indeed you yourself apply it to a KQRRBBNNPPPPPPPPvKQRRBBNNPPPPPPPP position.

Your requirement that I produce a set of games from a drawn KRPPvKRP position is obviously just prevarication. You declined to produce any yourself on spurious grounds. 

Nevertheless I have produced a set. It's included in the following. 

All sets of games run from 1 second to 2048 seconds per ply doubling from one game to the next (except for the KNNvKP where I mislaid the 512 second game). All adjudicated by tablebase if the number of men reduces.

I await your calculations proving the theoretical result of the starting position and number of errors in each game.

Once you have done that we can drop the pointless discussions about your proposals to solve chess and discuss the topic instead.

@5948
"the games should be of interest to you"
++ None of these 4 positions is of interest in relation to weakly solving chess.

1st position counts 5 men only.
Weakly solving chess stops when the 7-men endgame table base is reached.

2nd position is a forced win for black,
cannot be reached from the initial position by optimal play from both sides.

3rd position is a forced win for white,
cannot be reached from the initial position by optimal play from both sides.

4th position is a forced win for white,
cannot be reached from the initial position by optimal play from both sides.

I await your drawn KRPP vs. KRP.

tygxcian logic is most amusing.

1. Here is a position where one side is winning.
2. Chess is a draw, therefore this position cannot be reached with optimal play.
3. Therefore, we don't have to consider this position in the proof that chess is a draw.
4. Hence chess is a draw

All of the positions are of interest in relation to whether your calculations are correct.

(None of your posts are  of interest in relation to weakly solving chess.)

You presumably base the fact that that some of the positions I've given cannot be reached from the starting position on the claim that the starting position is drawn. You claim your calculations prove that. Are you saying they prove it only if the starting position is drawn? If so I can give you a much simpler proof of the proposition "if the starting position is drawn then the starting position is drawn".

The fact is there is nothing in your calculations that assumes either the number of men in the starting position or the theoretical result. All the positions are relevant. You're just prevaricating.

Your evaluations above are also inaccurate, I've given you a drawn KRPP vs. KRP already in that set. Apply your calculations to find out which, why don't you?

I await your post of the detailed calculations.

Misrepresentation.

I said "After 1. Nf3 d5 2. Ng1, black is clearly better off than white in the opening position", because you had stated (incorrectly) that black was "one tempo up" in that position, like white is traditionally (and misleadingly) said to be in the opening position.

I always used to think that white is half a tempo up, in the opening position. I don't know where I got that from but it seemed, somehow, to make sense to me. After all, white does have an advantage of time in the opening position: or of movement or whatever you like to call it. I think GMs of old called it "time", which relates, of course, to "tempo".

is broadly correct, provided that it's absolutely clear that one side is winning due to an obvious blunder by the other side. That is how any well-designed algorithm would work, too, given that a strong solution of chess is completely pointless and meaningless in terms of solving chess.

It isn't circular logic, because the logic is exactly identical to "how do you know you will hurt yourself by jumping off a 300 foot cliff onto sharp rocks below?"

The logic is not circular. It is assumptive: and correctly so.

@5952
"After 1. Nf3 d5 2. Ng1, black is clearly better off than white in the opening position"
++ No, it is a draw just the same. A draw is no better than a draw.

White is a tempo up in the initial position.
If white checkmates black and black can checkmate in return, then it is no draw, but white wins.

@5950
"Therefore, we don't have to consider this position in the proof that chess is a draw."
++ You misrepresent my arguments.
1. Chess is a draw because:
a) Expert opinions of all World Champions
b) TCEC: needs 50 imposed slightly unbalanced openings to prevent all draws
c) ICCF: 136 draws, 6 white wins, 3 black wins
d) AlphaZero self play 97.7% draws, more with more time/move, even if stalemate = draw
e) Human top matches and tournaments: more draws with time and with higher ratings
f) White is up 1 tempo = 1/3 pawn, not enough to win. A pawn can queen, but a tempo cannot.

2. Thus weakly solving chess is hopping from the initial drawn position to other drawn positions until a drawn 7-men endgame table base position or a prior 3-fold repetition.

3. Therefore a position where one side is winning cannot be reached from the initial position by optimal play from both sides and thus is not relevant in weakly solving chess.

That isn't the initial position you're talking about there.

I'm still awaiting your post of the detailed calculations applied to the positions I posted. Once you've done that you don't need to keep posting this crap and everyone can get on with discussing the topic.

That isn't a deductive argument and you're employing different criteria from Elroch's. I'm not saying that you're wrong that chess is a draw but you have not proven it to Elroch's satisfaction because what you have given is not a deductive proof and there's nothing that can make it so.

Your 1a) is fully reasonable but still opinion.
1b) is incorrect, so far as proof goes. One reason is that "50" is clearly an arbitary number but again, it's opinion and is much weaker than 1a). It may be a corollary of 1a).
1c) is corroborative evidence but in no way conclusive if it stands alone.
1d) A computer playing itself isn't a proper test, AT ALL. In fact I think that could be held as evidence that chess is a win.
1e) strongly confirms the assumption that chess is a draw but it remains an assumption.
1f)) I agree with that. It's evidence that chess ought to be drawn from a theoretical point of view but it's still opinion.

2. "Thus" here is therefore not so in the deductive sense.
3. Well, that's my opinion too but it's your opinion and also my opinion. Therefore, your  use of "therefore" cannot be part of a deductive argument. It merely reflects the conclusion we draw from our opinions, which is that chess is definitely drawn with best play. It still isn't the proof which Elroch demands. I personally think he's mistaken to demand it, if such a proof is impossible, which I believe it is. But it's still his prerogative to remain agnostic.

blah blah

Thankyou. I believe I used an arithmetical approach at the time: but it was decades ago and I can't remember exactly what the thought processes were. Maybe that tempo is logically half a ply, when applied to white's opening advantage of the move.

For instance, in the giving of odds, I believe the odds "pawn and move" was ambiguous; referring possibly to two different things.

1 (b) has also already been pointed out to be false (I can't recall by whom) both because:

• it was not true that there were no wins without forced openings - rather there were not many
• there are still many draws with forced openings

Even if one doesn't fully understand what it means because one doesn't know what "a forced opening" is a label for, it might still be clear that it cannot be part of a deductive argument.

@5963
About 1b TCEC: of the 50 imposed slightly unbalanced openings:
19 worked as intended: a win and a draw
22 lead to two draws: not unbalanced enough
9 lead to a win and a loss: too unbalanced

If they would not impose unbalanced openings, they would have all draws.

It isn't circular logic, because the logic is exactly identical to "how do you know you will hurt yourself by jumping off a 300 foot cliff onto sharp rocks below?"

This isn't logic....it's instinct. Even animals have it. They don't have to apply logic to sense danger, and if you're looking 300' down at sharp rocks, it's not logic that's scaring you....it's the self preservation instinct, in a different part of your brain. 

On the other hand, even a non-logician like me could prove that chess is a draw if one of the givens is "Chess is a draw".