Chess will never be solved, here's why

@7544

"If ICCF players have already solved chess then there's no need to wait 5 years with a supercomputer and Sveshnikov's ghost."
++ ICCF players have not solved chess, but they often play perfect chess with optimal play from both sides to draws, but not always: there are still a few decisive games, i.e. with errors.
Over the years they make fewer and fewer errors and draw more.
They still take 2 years with engines to play such a perfect game with optimal play by both sides.

dam

I swear to god if its "butt tickler" I will cancel you on twitter

wait i think theres just some absolute dingus downvoting EVERYONE'S posts rn.  i propose that we just upvote indiscriminately as a frick u to that guy

aight im upvoting everything, u down?

Chess can be solved, so it will be solved unless we all die. Eventually we can have a computer powerful enough to solve chess. And eventually those computers will become everyday items like laptops

Not necessarily the top players in the world. Some of them tend to believe chess is drawn. Some of them are not sure. But there's a difference between "not sure" and demanding a proof which is impossible to achieve. If we want deductive proof, that can never be given, even if chess is fully solved. That's because we could never be fully sure that there isn't a mistake in the programming or any algorithms. That is just as serious an issue, or it should be, as the absence of any deductive proof in the first place. We're kidding ourselves if we think that a deductive proof, from a full solution solution of chess, that can't be followed and can't really be checked, provides the deductive solution that we may want to believe we require and wish to believe that we should be able to depend upon. So all a full solution would do, would be to provide further support for our already existing belief that chess is drawn by best play.

"Knowing" something is strongly confirmed belief, in any case. So a person would consider that they knew something if they believed that a deductive proof on which they depended was correct and fully dependable. However, a proof that the proof is correct in this type of case we're discussing is circular or infinitely ..... what's the word for it? Infinitely regressive: a phrase used in philosophy to describe a "proof" that depends on another version of the same proof to prove that it's correct. Strictly, it isn't circular: any attempt at a proof consists of an infinite regression of related ideas, which can never achieve the status of a deductive proof which is both valid and proven to be true. More like an infinite spiral or coil.

@7607

"how many trillions of times faster does a computer need to be to solve chess"
++ Existing computers of 10^9 nodes/s can weakly solve Chess in 5 years exhausting all 10^17 relevant positions.

Then I'm sure you don't read it right. A solution for chess doesn't mean a tangle of lines that can't be understood or untangled. It should be assumed to result in an "objective" assessment of the true game state. That's whether it's drawn or won etc, by best play. It's why a so-called "strong solution" would be worthless. It would require algorithmic means to determine the true game state and that, at the moment, is beyond the scope of any algorithm which exists and beyond the scope of any which can even be realistically conceived of. That's because chess can't be mathematically represented. At least, my son reckons that and he's probably more qualified than anyone here to make such a judgement.

 ...a personal opinion that will never bear fruit.

As some trolls obscure the discussion with a personal 'definition' and as Wikipedia misquotes the reference it lists itself, here are the official definitions, with references.

Chess is the game as described by the Laws of Chess.

Ultra-weakly solved means that the game-theoretic value of the initial position has been
determined,
weakly solved means that for the initial position a strategy has been determined to achieve the game-theoretic value against any opposition, and
strongly solved is being used for a game for which such a strategy has been determined for all legal positions. Van den Herik, 2002, Games Solved now and in the Future
A strategy can be a set of moves like Checkers, a set of rules like Connect Four, or a combination.
The game-theoretic value of a game is the outcome when all participants play optimally.
Optimal play is play without errors.
An error (?) is a move that turns a draw into a loss, or a win into a draw. (Hübner 1996)
A blunder or double error (??) is a move that turns a win into a loss.
A diagram is the location of all men on the board.
A position is a diagram plus side to move, castling rights, and en passant flag. (Laws of Chess)
A node is a position plus evaluation and history. Nodes per second

@7612

"a personal opinion"
++ Expert opinion by GM Sveshnikov,
corroborated by calculations based on peer reviewed litterature.

Ah, wonderful. Anything you agree with is therefore official!

"a personal opinion"
++ Expert opinion by GM Sveshnikov,
corroborated by calculations based on peer reviewed literature.

That's a personal opinion.

<<The game-theoretic value of a game is the outcome when all participants play optimally.
Optimal play is play without errors.>>

I call it the game state, because it's shorter, more direct and more readily understandable. "Game-theoretic value of a game" needlessly repeats a word and so it isn't an efficient way of describing what you hope to describe.

It seems redundant to remind others that you can't think well. You do make some very good observations regarding practicalities of playing the game. You make some errors as we all do. Some think you make more errors than others but that impression comes from the abject rubbish you talk about "solving". You should give it a rest and concentrate on practicalities because it's clear you cannot think well and accurately regarding abstract ideas. Then your reputation would be enhanced, instead of constantly being diminished by the rubbish you talk about solving chess.

Obfuscation is your specialty, not mine.  It's been a couple of years now.  Progress on your premise?  Zero.

Certainly agree with you there.

Regarding "strategy", it's clear that it refers to permutations of moves. Finding the best moves in any situation.

Calling something a "strategy" and then having to define "strategy" in the context of chess as "finding the best moves" is remarkably stupid.

no thats actually the official stuff, I have known that since before this discussion

No such thing as the game described in the Laws of Chess.

If you assert something of the thing satisfying some condition, then you simultaneously assert the existence and uniqueness of a thing that satisfies the condition. (See peer reviwed publication  Whitehead & Russell Principia Mathematica Volume I *14 p173.)

The Laws of chess describe multiple distinct games, so your definition fails the uniqueness criterion. According to the authors, your statement, "Chess is the game as described by the Laws of Chess" is simply false (though others have argued it's strictly meaningless).

As I've previously argued, none of the games in the (FIDE) Laws of Chess you link to are soluble because FIDE fail to ensure a well defined yield for each player. If both players resign at the same time, the laws say the game terminates and both players win. If instead White checkmates without any simultaneous event occurring the game terminates and only White wins. The laws do not say which is the better yield for White.

The fact that the games can't be solved is a relatively minor matter, because it's simple to produce games that can be solved based on the FIDE games and we can discuss those if everyone agrees. But it should be done. I think the best thing, since there are numerous threads on the same topic would be for me to start a new thread with a selection of candidate rules where we can first decide by vote what games we want to talk about.

More important is that with multiple games come different solutions and differences in things referred to by other terms (e.g. "position", "legal position", "dead position", "distance to mate", "perfect move", "accurate move", "blunder", "game node", "winning position" etc. etc.). I should probably start threads for each of the terms in contention too along the same lines.  

Do you mean it's what can be found on Wiki when Googling? I did have the misfortune to be coerced into reading the so-called official stuff and I thought it was so bad and generally out of focus that it needs to be challenged. When I first saw it, I genuinely thought it was a joke, devised by some philosophy professor or other, just to see who would believe it. My subject's philosophy and some of the errors would fail a second-year undergrad essay.

It's mish-mash of improperly related ideas, probably put out by people calling themselves "games theorists" and who probably don't know what games theory really is. Actually, the general definition of games theory, to be found on Wiki, isn't too bad. It's about an application of games STRATEGY to real life situations, to turn those situations into a game simulation model which can be scored; scores being applied to outcomes and jiggled about until something approaching real life outcomes is achieved. Then that model can be applied to different strategies of dealing with those r. l. situations. Obviously, a game itself can become the object of a games theoretical approach, with alternative strategies being scored. This will be the source of the general confusion in the so-called official definitions, especially regarding the specialised meaning of "strategy".

This is the main problem with the practice of referring to the product of a solution of chess as a strategy, because to anyone who understands the ideas involved, assigning scores to positions is the strategy programmed into chess engine algorithms. Whereas the product of a solution of chess is wrongly claimed to be a strategy, it really consists of finding accurate moves, in response to moves made by the opponent. A workable strategy isn't going to consist of finding bad moves or anything else than good moves, which are defined as not changing the game state! However, at the moment, none of the algorithms is accurate enough to base a dependable solution on it.

Some of the types of people here buy straight into this pseudo-intellectualised "games theory approach", of course without understanding the basics. Undoubtedly, where they lead, others follow, because such people spend much of their time building a façade of intellectualism, with which to con others.

So the useful outcome of my preceding post is an efficient and correct definition of a good move in chess.

A good move is any move which does not change the game state. An error is one that changes the game state.