Chess will never be solved, here's why

No. The first move advantage is enough to force a win. But, as we know, some forced checkmates are many hundreds of moves long. Longer than what the 50 move rule allows. 

Here we go round ...
Patriot calculated a forced win in 23,402 moves I believe, but she had to count on her toes too.

Guilty as charged. But I admit I cheated, I used some long division too. 

Presumably 23,401.5 since you say it's a win for White. (How many toes have you got?)

Re: Ba6?! is a win for black.

Is there a good reference for this? It's hard to search 329 pages.

As to other solved games reaffirming conventional wisdom about said games, sure, that's exactly what you would expect... most of the time.

But surely it is possible to conceive of (or perhaps even construct) a game where this does not hold true. One where a deep enough exhaustive search of a conventionally weak opening will reveal some tactical advantage to that opening that is not otherwise apparent and actually allows for player 1 to win when otherwise the game is a draw from all of the conventionally good openings with perfect play.

So the question is, do we know that chess is not such a game, or do we think that chess is not such a game? I would say we think it's not such a game, but that we do not actually know. As such a game wouldn't necessarily produce evidence that the optimal line was not reachable by gradient descent on some heuristic evaluation but involved very deep tactical play.

There are one or two rather incompetent chess players who think it may not be a win for black!

I spent 10 minutes with the Chess.com analysis tool, playing black but deliberately making the substandard move, Bd6, before moving black's d-pawn. Naturally I took the Ba6 with the pawn rather than the knight. Pawn takes on a6 has to be correct. Even after the slightly substandard Bd6, black increases his advantage fast. There isn't any doubt at all that it's a win for black. I think this is a case of some people being

                                                  BLINDED BY ENGINES

Ok but someone in this thread was saying there's a forced line of 52 moves. That bishop odds is a huge advantage is categorically different from saying we have proof that it's a win in however many moves at most.

That was tygxc. It's doubtful that it's perfectly accurate, although it does sound about right, I would have thought

However, I know I exist but I can't prove it to you. I might be someone's invention or a remarkable bot. Proof isn't important in many aspects of life and we can say we know things without the fear that mathematicians and logicians can rightly dismiss such claims. Different people use the word "proof" in differing ways, so I'm probably happier with saying that I know something, rather than that I can try to prove it to you. My subject is philosophy and some others here may be mathematicians. I would never accept that they should have any sort of hierarchical priority simply because it's their belief they can think "better" than others and indeed, in a recent conversation regarding the nature of infinity, it seemed to me to be the mathematicians that couldn't get even close to understanding the concept.

This is an unfortunate example of ego inverting the correct comparison.

People who have a profound understanding of uncertainty, based on a large amount of experience of simpler examples where the probabilities are not so extreme can see that the nature of the evidence involved and the reasoning available means that we cannot justify CERTAINTY about this result. The epistemiologically correct state of belief is that of slight uncertainty.

The error that the proverbial "man in the street" would surely make is one that is pragmatically fine for all normal purposes. This is to treat all small probabilities as zero. It's perfectly reasonable to (literally) bet your life on something with very low probability not happening. But some of us understand that it is quantitatively enormously wrong (in a way that those familiar how to quantify how wrong a belief is can see).

To illustrate that last point, suppose someone takes the view that an event that happens 1 in a trillion times is literally impossible. This would imply that they would be willing to stake an unlimited amount against any return on this being so. And they would be willing to do this an unlimited number of times. That is what certainty means quantitatively.

Suppose in this case they happen to have the power to bet a trillion dollars on the event for a return of 1 cent when they are proven right. A great bet, to this person.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of examples of events more unlikely than this that happen all the time in the quantum world. It's just a matter of numbers. So this person would lose trillions after trillions by treating a low probability as zero.

I feel a non-lazy person should be able to understand the above.

I will separate the part of my attempt at enlightenment that deals explicitly with the specific chess example for clarity.

The key is to recognise the nature of the evidence for the belief and the reasoning that leads to it.

The nature of the evidence is examples of possible chess play from the position. But not an exhaustive calculation, like that necessary to verify a chess problem. It's the sort of thing Sveshnikov imagined - good old fashioned chess analysis, incomplete but enough for high confidence.   In addition, there is weaker evidence from a large number of not so closely related positions with real play, where a material advantage leads to a win.

All of the reasoning from this evidence to the specific question - does a specific lousy opening position lose? - is INDUCTIVE.  For example, suppose you find a line with what appears to be sensible moves by each player to a finish and one side wins, this is weak evidence the position is winning. It is not actually more certain in itself than a game from 1. d4 winning for black with moves we thought were sensible is to support the view that 1. d4 loses.

Every additional step of inductive reasoning increases confidence in the result. But the distance between probability p> 0 and probability 0 is infinite on a logarithmic scale, and this is related to the fact that inductive reasoning steps never turn uncertainty into certainty. All they can do is reduce the uncertainty by a finite amount.

It's a really good bet that a lousy position that we cannot exhaustively analyse is losing, but it is not IMPOSSIBLE that it is not, just very unlikely (a phrase which incorporates an infinite range of levels of confidence short of certainty.

It's only really the somewhat more intuitively difficult nature of quantifying belief that makes this non-trivial. It's really no more complicated than the idea that you can never get to infinity by a finite number of steps of multiplying finite numbers together. This is true even when the numbers are really very big!

Regarding @Optimissed's reference to engines, they are of no significance to the key point. The recognition that inductive reasoning does not lead to certainty, and the quantification of belief by Bayesian probability (and the proof that this is in a definable sense the only consistent way to quantify belief) predates chess computers. All chess computers can do is exploratory analysis - where this is exhaustive it has analogous significance as an exhaustive analysis by a human (or a proof engine for mathematical theorems), and where it is not exhaustive it has analogous significance to the same by a human, and is merely inductive evidence.

Please don't advertise here.

I don't really want to start another series of endless arguments with you but I don't think you know what ego actually is and what it does. You argument is from the perspective of mathematical proof only. Where such proof is impossible or unlikely it's necessary to ply a different tack.

I haven't read your post but it looks as if you're trying to make an argument that something we know very well is actually governed by the approach that computers make when they are programmed in a certain manner so as to always give probabilities.

However, the real world is different. The sun doesn't exist within a probability ratio. Perhaps you should look to yourself before you presume that others are bound to think the way you do because you are, of course, correct and if they disagree with you, others can't be correct. In this matter, you should reassess.

<<The epistemologically correct state of belief is that of slight uncertainty.>>

No it isn't. Let's say I was leading a climb up a particularly tricky rock face and I hit an even more tricky bit. I'm sorry, but you can't perform the actions necessary in a state of slight uncertainty!
Anyway, it's as I said. Perhaps an incompetent chess player wouldn't be sure that 2. Ba6 loses. Perhaps that's because they actually have no faith in their own perceptions? Each one to their own, I'm sure, but I'm afraid you can't tell those of a different emotional disposition from yourself that your way of looking at the world is correct and theirs isn't, and expect to get away with it. Sounds a bit egotistic!

Forget about the ego bit, which merely obstructs your self-improvement.

Mathematics is what is used to represent quantitative knowledge about the real world. This is the case for all of the models of physics. It is also true for, say, informational theory and computer science, which are comfortably included in the broad subject of mathematics as they deal with abstractions that are perfect for dealing with the underlying nature of many applications. It is also true of the quantification of belief - this just happens to be less familiar to many people.

Thinking about it a little further, I think the relevant trick or talent lies in understanding which things we can be certain of and which we can't, rather than assuming that the universe consists wholly of things we can't be sure of.

What are you saying there? Is it that getting mixed up about ego obstructs your own self-improvement, because it's still an issue with you, but in applying that edict to yourself, you cannot help unnecessarily applying it to others?

Incidentally, 2. Ba6 losing doesn't consist of quantitative knowledge. That's where you're going wrong. It's purely qualitative, since it loses. It doesn't "probably lose". There are situations which we cannot easily understand but this isn't one of them and your mistake seems to be to wish to apply that same formula to all situations, including those where it's inappropriate, "just to be safe". Really that isn't an epistemological uncertainty but probably an emotional one. If something causes you to invest your beliefs very heavily in that kind of doctrinaire assessment, it probably isn't something you can easily overcome!

<<It is also true of the quantification of belief - this just happens to be less familiar to many people.>>

More specifically, it ought to be clear to you that this thing, "the quantification of belief" is an artificial device which has been invented in order to try to make it look as if computers can resemble the human mind. However, computers don't have minds. They have circuitry, which, however complex, is linear. A computer doesn't believe anything. The idea of applying probabilities is just part of a primitive attempt at simulating artificial intelligence. We're a long way off that as yet, because it would be necessary to understand what the human mind does in order to simulate (or even replace) it.

You write:
<<<<<The error that the proverbial "man in the street" would surely make is one that is pragmatically fine for all normal purposes. This is to treat all small probabilities as zero. It's perfectly reasonable to (literally) bet your life on something with very low probability not happening. But some of us understand that it is quantitatively enormously wrong (in a way that those familiar how to quantify how wrong a belief is can see).

To illustrate that last point, suppose someone takes the view that an event that happens 1 in a trillion times is literally impossible. This would imply that they would be willing to stake an unlimited amount against any return on this being so. And they would be willing to do this an unlimited number of times. That is what certainty means quantitatively.>>>>>

Your error is to treat something that is either 0 or 1 as 0.99999999999999, if you see what I mean. In reality, whether 2. Ba6 loses is not a probability because it either loses or it does not lose. Therefore the analogy with gambling on outcomes isn't correct. The uncertainty is in your own mind but not in mine. That's equivalent to many other things we accept as certainties, so there's nothing special about it.

It is a doctrinaire approach that you're taking. It isn't based on realities at all but more like on infirmities: the infirmity of the human mind. First you think that it isn't sure that chess is a forced draw. Well, that view is quite respectable compared with this: that an advantage to black on move 2 after 1. e4 e5 2. Ba6 ba, which gives black an extra piece PLUS a positional edge, isn't sure to be a win for black. I much prefer 2. ... ba to 2. ...Nxa6 but I'm sure the latter move would also win, but slower. All black needs to do is develop, swap off and maybe sacrifice a piece for a couple of pawns at the correct point.

Like I said: blinded by engines.