Chess will never be solved, here's why

I read virtually nothing published after 1966 except part one of the Foundation Trilogy, which may have been later than that. My dad continued to read sci-fi whenever and wherever he could get hold of it and at least twice I gave him job lots of a hundred or two books, because I was a part-time book dealer for a few years.

Since the 30 digits of pi is piquing my memory cells but without a positive feedback, maybe it was pre 1964, since I probably read most sci-fi published before then except a few authors maybe like James Blish.

@6322

"if there are no mistakes, the game is a draw" ++ Yes, correct.

"between 0.3 and 0.6(for playing e4 at least), which is an indication of a draw" ++ Yes

"that advantage could grow exponentially as the game goes on" ++ As one side errs

"not even chess engines can calculate the best of the best moves"
++ There are only good moves, errors (?), and blunders (??)

"some trash opening" ++ There is knowledge. 1 a4 cannot be better than 1 e4 or 1 d4, 1 Nh3 cannot be better than 1 Nf3

"it would be some forced mate in 200 moves" ++ No, Chess is a draw

"we can’t prove that there’s a forced mate in 200 moves" ++ There is no such #200

"nothing can calculate move orders that far" ++ Yes, 10^9 nodes/s cloud engines can calculate from the initial position to a 7-men endgame table base draw or a prior 3-fod repetition draw.

Just had a thought. It wasn't Algernon the mouse was it? You probably read that classic .... about a man who was mentally retarded and received a treatment that gave him an IQ of 200 or something.

To me, solving chess is purely mathematical with zero consideration of such things as confidence levels or statistical treatments. 
If someone "solves" chess to the point of being 99.99% confident, I'll bet on him every time, but I would not consider his solution a true solution.  In most cases, 99.99% is plenty good. In solving chess, it's "close but no cigar". 

But the reason I'm following is because I'm open to hearing arguments on both sides.....which I'm definitely hearing. 

@6324

"non-standard terminology"

'I have attached question marks to the moves which change a winning position into a drawn game, or a drawn position into a losing one, according to my judgment;

a move which changes a winning game into a losing one deserves two question marks

There are no exclamation marks, as they serve no useful purpose. The best move should be mentioned in the analysis in any case; an exclamation mark can only serve to indicate the personal excitement of the commentator.' - GM Dr. Hübner

A move which can be seen to change the result by half a point deserves "??" for a sufficiently strong player. Check with any GM.

The eccentric view that blunders only occur from winning positions rather than drawing ones is a random obfuscation by you.

Huebner points out that from a detached viewpoint there are no brilliant moves, merely correct ones, since no move positively changes the theoretical result.

By contrast, blunders do exist.

Yes I can't agree with tygxc's separation of different types of blunder. It's just completely wrong, because anything that reduces the game-state from any forced result to a forced result which is worse for one party is a blunder.

This misses most of the detail in the calculation, and is:

(1) Taken from games that are played under different rules from the nebulous game you offer to solve.

(2) Not played by the vehicle (Stockfish, version yet to be documented) you say you plan to use.

(3) From a position where none of the results can be reliably checked.

(4) Verifiably wrong in numerous positions that can be checked from tablebases.

It's based on the assumption that the occurrence of blunders in a game is a Poisson process. So you're postulating e.g. that SF? will make as many blunders in KNNvKP positions (where it normally blunders) as in KRvK positions (where it normally doesn't).

Moreover the material on the board enters nowhere into your "reasoning", so it should apply irrespective of material. Your assumption is also that the probability of a second half point blunder in any position is the same as the first, so unless you're asserting that only full point blunders occur (which invalidates your Poisson process assumption straight away) your reasoning should apply equally to drawn or winning positions. 

For the above reasons I have posted some games (reproduced below) where your "calculation" can be checked against perfect play by reference to tablebases and invited you to apply your calculations to those games. I've added the blunders both with and without the 50 move (resp. CRblunder and BRblunder) in the last game to start you off.

You've been pretending not to notice the first set for the best part of a year and you've been pretending not to notice the rest for at least the last dozen pages, though I've reminded you several times.

I'm inclined to guess, possibly unkindly, that you've already tried and failed to get your calculations to work in these positions, but having convinced yourself that your proposed "solution" is a non-starter, are ignoring these reminders because you just get a perverted pleasure from posting as much misinformation as you can on the internet.

You can prove that guess wrong by either successfully showing that your calculation works in those games or acknowledging that you've been posting so much BS and ceasing to plug your "solution". I challenge you to do one or other.

If you disregard the terminology...... obviously there are many kinds and degrees of mistakes, referred to as blunders in chess. Are we suggesting that all mistakes are equal, or can we say, "Although a blunder is a blunder is a blunder, and they all make the forced result worse for the blunderer, there are degrees. Some blunders change a win to a draw, some change a draw to a loss, and some change a win to a loss."  So, tygxc's differentiation kind of makes sense to me.....even though I don't see those definitions as pertinent to whether chess can be solved. 

@6332

"solving chess is purely mathematical" ++ Agree

"with zero consideration of such things as confidence levels or statistical treatments"
++ Solving itself is different from arguments about it.

"If someone solves chess to the point of being 99.99% confident" ++ The proposed method makes 1 error in 10^20 positions, while there are only 10^17 relevant positions.

@6337

"tygxc's differentiation kind of makes sense to me" ++ Of course it makes sense, it is the only sensible definition. It is not even mine, it stems from GM Dr. Hübner.

"I don't see those definitions as pertinent to whether chess can be solved"
++ Chess can be weakly solved, the question is in what time. In the arguments about that it is pertinent to define error. The definition calls for both players to play optimally. Playing optimally is play without error.

@tygxc hello... hello... hello... hello...hello...hello... hello... ...

...

...

...

...

Then, silence. Some fancied they heard in the air

   A weary and wandering sigh

That resembled a sum but the others declare

   It was only a breeze that went by.

To take an extreme example, the obvious blunder is white allowing black a scholar's mate. At the other end of the scale, a player commits an inaccuracy which allows a forced loss but it's difficult to spot and execute. Ask yourself whether it's a blunder, though. They both lose. It may be that the second example wouldn't have occurred if the player was adhering to rules of thumb and positional considerations. What you actually seem to be saying is that if a weak player makes a losing move, it may not be as bad a blunder as if a strong player had made it. I suppose there may be something in that .... an understandable blunder.

But it's still a move which changes the optimum game result, negatively for the player making the move. Common sense certainly tells us that tygxc is wrong to differentiate between
win > draw and win > loss.

And obviously, so was Dr Hubner. A title doesn't make someone's opinions accurate. A physician may not always get the diagnosis right. A judge may not always sum up evidence accurately and without bias. It's ridiculous to name-drop in that manner.

I'm just suggesting that there are different degrees of blunders, so I don't have a problem, per se, with tygxc's differentiation of them. 

But a true solution of chess would treat all blunders the same......i.e. avoidance. 

I understand you, which is why I prefer "blunder" to mean a silly mistake or oversight. A blunder is therefore always a silly and bad mistake, in that context.  Something that with more care would have been avoided so it implies a basic failing wrt duty of care. A mistake, to me, is a normal error, which may change an optimum outcome negatively or may not.

You can't have a double blunder. If it refers to one blunder then it's nonsense, Hubner or no Hubner.

Wrong

There's nothing wrong with @tygxc's differentiation between errors that change a theoretical win into a theoretical loss and errors that either change a theoretical draw into a theoretical loss or a theoretical win into a theoretical draw. 

There is a problem with his terminology, exactly as @Elroch points out here.

A practical consequence is that I have in the past been using the term "error" to mean "half point blunder" and "blunder" to mean "full point blunder" when responding to @tygxc and reverting to standard in other responses. This is likely to cause confusion all round, so I've lately reverted to standard in some of my responses to @tygxc - no doubt causing even more confusion.

@tygxc is, I would judge, unlikely to change his terminology, so the best thing is probably to ignore his posts altogether. I would say he has comprehensively demonstrated that he is deliberately trolling.

So I would suggest that all should use the terms "half point blunder" and "full point blunder" in the sense generally used by game theorists, to avoid talking at cross purposes.

Note that the terms represent different moves depending on whether the 50 move and 3-fold repetition rule are in force or not. In the first set of games (KNNvKP) that I posted for @tygxc, SF made 30 basic rules blunders and 28 blunders with the rules in force, but only 4 of those were blunders in both games. Similarly in the last game that I annotated there were 2 blunders with the rules in force and 1 without that was neither of those.

The degrees of blunder you mention certainly bear examination and I'll come back to that, but if they're not actually theoretical blunders I think we should refer to them as errors of varying severity. The level of severity very much depends on the level of play.   

E.g. In this game the analysis gives me

Moves 68B (the unique most accurate move) and 72W are flagged as blunders. These are not blunders at the level of Javitotwit, newbie4711, Syzygy or Nalimov, but they are blunders at the level of Coach (with my subscription).

I think you are thinking of a Heinlein novel, I just don't know which one has it.

Somebody got unmuted.  Congrats.