During the last 50 or so posts - many of them were 'soft guy hard guy' -
(I skipped 98% of that) -
but there were some good posts by btickler and at least one good idea from Elroch - although this might not have been Precisely the idea he was conveying/had in mind.
namely - to classify positions according to pawn placement.
Kings and pawns are extra-distinct from the other pieces.
In that - the two Kings are always there and opposite colored plus there can only be Two.
Plus unlike with the other pieces - pawn moves cannot be reversed.
But could computers count up all the possible pawn positions with maximum 8 of each color? It would be a gigantic number.
Plus the possibilities from adding two Kings would add three or so more powers of ten.
It would probably be better to 'tablebase' the number of positions with just the two Kings plus one pawn.
Would it end up being 48 x the number of possible Kings positions ?
Literally not quite.
The numbers for an edge pawn would be different from an interior pawn.
After that - it might be easy to tablebase for two pawns and more - because there would be simple multiplications and additions to do.
Chess will never be solved, here's why
You equate the interminable semantic and other repetitive arguments that have taken place in this and other threads on this subject with a great understanding and meanwhile, all you can do is attack me for telling people that they aren't getting anywhere and I know why. You build quite an edifice with your words, very often, but there's very little meaning in them and understanding displayed by them. I would much rather talk with someone who can manage a productive input. You turn everything into a battle with other people. As well as being a DELETED.
Oops, I missed this one. So, you parrot my point back at me:
"Meanwhile, there's a good deal of "the emperor has no clothes" going on here. You pretend that you have greater understanding, but can produce nothing but complaints about everyone else's understanding."
vs.
"You build quite an edifice with your words, very often, but there's very little meaning in them and understanding displayed by them."
...and complain I attack you (while tossing in a completely gratuitous insult at the end of your post):
"for telling people that they aren't getting anywhere and I know why"
Actually I never mentioned that at all, because I don't really care that you think you know why when you have yet to even be able to follow the most basic definitions/terms used in the discussion.
"You turn everything into a battle with other people. As well as being a DELETED."
No, everything between myself and a certain select subset of posters tends to turn into a battle 
. Reading your next sentence will point out one of the numerous reasons why you are one of them. With most posters I am quite cordial, but I believe in eye for an eye with posters that like to throw their weight around indiscriminately, and I have been known to confront posters that spread misinformation, or troll consistently. Since you dabble in all three...
You're itching for a fight with someone, so find someone who rates you high enough to want a fight with you.. You're dishonest and you can't tolerate others with opinions different from your own. And you're completely self-obsessed.
Another auto-biographical post.
As long as you continue to state that there's no difference between weak and strong solutions for chess, or games in general, I (and probably the same several others that have refuted you ...) will continue to refute you. That's how forums and messageboards work. You do not have some special right to post uncontested, especially after entering threads to take sideswipes yourself. Now, if I were just following you around harassing you every time you posted "have a nice day", *then* you would have a legitimate complaint.
they can all be solved
yes!
Imagine a chess position of X paradigms.
Now, a chess computer rated 3000 solves that position. All well and good.
Could another computer rated a zillion solve that position better than Rybka?
No, because not even chess computer zillion could solve the Ruy Lopez better than a sad FIDE master could.
the point is, there's chess positions with exact solutions. Either e4, or d4, or c4, etc.
nothing in the world can change that.
So if you are talking about chess as a competitive sport, then chess has already been solved by kasparov, heck, by capablanca.
If you are talking chess as a meaningless sequence of algorithms, where solving chess equates not to logical solutions of positional and tactical prowess, but as 'how many chess positions could ensure from this one?'' type of solutions, then, the solutions are infinite.
So can chess be solved? If it is as a competitive sport where one side must, win, then it has already been solved. Every possible BEST move in chess has been deduced long ago.
If chess is a meaningless set of moves, with no goal in sight, then sure, chess will never be solved.
yes!
This means that you make personal attacks against those with who you disagree. You've admitted it. Obviously you are the one who throws his weight around and you've just admitted it. You should stick to doing it on your own threads, from which you have banned everyone who has contary opinions to yours.
Apparently you also cannot discern the difference between "eye for an eye for those throwing their weight around" and "personal attacks". My posts don't have to be particularly pleasant when I am responding to unpleasant posters, they just can't be "you are an imbecile" (which used to be your go-to exit). This oversight might explain your past mutings.
You don't know what "refute" means. You think it means that someone says "no, that isn't right". It actually means that you have to give convincing arguments which prove it's incorrect. You wouldn't know how to even attempt that. You're so completely out of your depth that your only recourse is to make personal attacks. Again.
If you continually misrepresent your disagreements as refutations, as you do, you won't get anywhere. You don't understand the subject matter, which is why you make personal attacks.
Anyway, all my comments regarding weak and strong solutions are correct but you just continually try to change your argument, because your argument is against the person and not the subject matter. Also, there isn't one person here who could successfully refute something that's correct and my arguments are completely correct. If you don't believe me, try to refute them. Go through my long post and, without making any personal attacks, as is your customary methodology, show what is wrong and demonstrate why.
I don't need to. I already refuted it. Several other posters also refuted it. Each argument was far more convincing than yours. I, and several more posters also tried to explain the difference to you, which you thanked me for .
You seemed to be being pleasant at the time. Also, you and another poster alerted me to the real reasons why the posters here are consistently making the mistakes they are making, which leads them into endless, circular, semantic entrapments. I was able to check up on the definitions and that led me to understand that they are being used incorrectly. Their arguments seem to be more convincing to you, because you agree with them. Actually they weren't even arguments worth taking seriously. To be truthful, they weren't arguments. They were statements of disagreement only. The word for them is "rebuttal", which is a disagreement usually without supporting argument.
Yes, you will note that I am often pleasant to posters that are also pleasant. Kind of deflates the diatribes you've been posting, doesn't it...
You didn't really "understand" or "uncover" that the definitions are being used incorrectly (since they aren't ...), you just made a unilateral judgment based on your lack of understanding/due diligence. Nothing new there.
People get off topic.
Learn to forget.
Forget the strong solution: a weak solution is difficult enough.
Forget a powerful algorithm that can determine the value draw/won/lost of a position without calculating: it does not exist.
Forget the 50-moves rule: it plays no role and can be considered non existent.
Forget the elusive wins in 1000 for white or even for black: they do not exist.
Forget multiple excess underpromotions: they do not happen in reality.
Forget the Tromp count: it counts positions that do not happen in reality.
Weakly solving chess is just a matter of calculation, time (5 years) and money (5 million).
Yes I'm sure whatever you say is correct. I will add this and we can see what others make of it, because I will not allow you to push me out of this thread.
Some of the posters on this and other threads make multiple errors. Firstly, they don't understand that the "strong solution" is merely a vast permutation of all possible move orders within chess.
You seem to have a habit of making errors when rashly claiming others make errors. For example in believing the smart people that have achieved the likes of solving checkers are mistaken in thinking there is a difference between a weak solution and a strong solution.
A 32-piece table base provides a strong solution of chess (very simple instructions suffice to explain how to play perfectly using one). Since the number of legal positions is hugely less than the number of legal games, there is not much point in a game-centric viewpoint - "permutation of all possible move orders". (Recall a strong solution needs to deal optimally with every legal position - that's the definition).
A strong solution must enable easy selection of a good move. One could be stored for each position, which would provide a strong solution that does not contain all the information in a tablebase, but rather more efficient would be to store a single field with one of the following, depending on the position value:
- the minimum number of moves to mate against best play
- the maximum number of moves to be mated against best play
- the fact that the position is a draw
This suffices because it is easy to find all legal moves, lookup the positions that can be reached and see which of them achieves the desired objective (by looking up the same field and finding if it indicates progress).
I will observe that without a 50 move or repetition of position rule it is arguable that all you need is a ternary flag saying "win/draw/loss" for each position. In a winning position this would allow you to win eventually by on every move randomly picking one of the moves that leads to a losing position for the opponent.
The assertion that this provides a strong solution is arguable - it depends on probability 1 of reaching a checkmate eventually being good enough! It is possible (but with probability zero) that the algorithm would accidentally avoid ever reaching mate.
The wins would be shockingly long if this horrible (but simple) algorithm was applied! Eg imagine if you played a rook ending by randomly picking a move that did not lose (or stalemate) every time. You would need a lot of random wandering to hit a sequence that forced mate.
Quantum computing & artificial intelligence will solve it BUT..... as it relates to competition between humans it won't impact it.
Machines allow us to move faster than humans but we still have foot races. There are millions of examples. Heck, computers ALREADY play chess far better than any human but human chess has grown even MORE popular while chess engines have grown in strength. It doesn't seem to make people want to quit.
The ideas as I've explained them are very simple .... even overly simplistic. But they represent an attempt at looking at the problems from first principles. To achieve any credibility in my eyes and nobody else's you should address them. I have no idea if you are the only person here capable of following them if you wish to.
You aren't addressing the problem of how the analysis is retrieved, for one thing. You talk about flags but have you considered the realities of the analysis? You can't have or you would be adressing my ideas.
Fixed.
If AI is actually possible. I don't think it is.
All there is is synthetic AI. They don't even know how the brain works, after all!
The goal of AI is not to build a scarecrow with a perfect facsimile of a human brain. Maybe you imagine that conscious thought is gift bestowed on human beings by a higher power that is meant only for us? It's an evolutionary trait. Intelligent design (by humanity, not a higher power) in a directed fashion can and will produce AI faster than evolution did the job for us . Whether that AI takes the form of an intelligence that can pass a Turing test is not really the litmus test.
I guess we'll just add this to the list of branches of science and technology that you don't believe in...
There's someone arguing that a "weak solution" could be performed in five years. They think that Stockfish could do it, on cloud computers but don't understand the positional assessment processes that would need to be involved, to make a solution of chess even remotely viable. And those arguing with that person don't understand that either, or they would have pointed it out. There's no appreciation of reality and it is the same with the attempt to magically apply the weak solution to a strong solving process, without the necessary algorithms to achieve it. If the other posters had realised that, the long-running argument within this and other threads would have been over almost as soon as it started. But they don't realise it. No-one has pointed it out. They all allow themselves to be sidetracked and that is why I decided to try to analyse what was happening. You seem uncomfortable with the results, which show that no-one has been thinking properly and efficiently.
I guess you missed where I have pointed this out to Tygxc in every single thread where he posts his mistaken notions that I run into. It has also been pointed out by many other posters here in this thread, as well as Pfren, BlueEmu, et al in other threads. I'm not sure how you've missed all this, but I suspect it's because your definition of "positional assessment processes" has some rather personal and narrow constraints that eliminate everybody but you from being "correct" .
Nobody has pointed out anything about "There's no appreciation of reality and it is the same with the attempt to magically apply the weak solution to a strong solving process, without the necessary algorithms to achieve it." because it's just fluff, and nobody in these discussions has ever seriously dug into a strong solution given the massive undertaking producing a weak solution represents. If the weak solution ends up being solved by some massive algorithmic breakthroughs that also knock out the strong solution, well, great 
. But there's no indication whatsoever that this is even possible, so it is currently pointless to talk about. I mean, human beings and engines still cannot even decide with 100% accuracy if trading a bishop for knight is called for in various given positions.
There's a nice family pic. The doctor on the left, the AI expert central and the person who reluctantly puts up with me on the right. With a nice family pic like that, taken in our front room just before Christmas, who can fail to be friends? Oh, there's a dog in the middle. Not a bundle of old rags but an expert in being a dog. Forgotten its name.
Fine and well, but ultimately, it will always come back to what is written. Pleasant produces pleasant. Civility produces civility. Pointed observations produce pointed observations. Condescension produces condescension. Etc.
The ideas as I've explained them may seem very simple .... even overly simplistic. But they represent an attempt at looking at the problems from first principles. To achieve any credibility you should address them. I know perfectly well that you are the only person here capable of following them if you wish to.
You aren't addressing the problem of how the analysis is retrieved, for one thing. You talk about flags but have you considered the realities of the analysis? You can't have or you would be adressing my ideas.
Well, for a strong solution in the form of a tablebase, what's the problem? The technicalities of accessing it are solved (for smaller analogs of chess).
For a weak solution an analog of Chinook is clearly a plausible paradigm. Roughly speaking this consists of the combination of an opening book and a tablebase that meet in the middle. It is easy to imagine (but impractical to implement) something very similar for chess. Eg a 16 piece tablebase (almost certainly not every position because many would not be needed) and an opening book containing every legal black move and with all the leaf nodes having 16 pieces (except those that end early).
Somebody, somewhere, must be very, very confused, because a situation has somehow been generated where no-one here is talking much sense. That someone isn't me. It's whoever has put these ideas in the collective mind of you lot!
Occam's Razor. Apply it.
Hi Btickler.
I've heard of this "Occam's razor" before. Are you familiar with Redpill78?
Your problem is that you haven't either followed the discussion or understood it. I couldn't work out why they were continually arguing round in circles and so I decided to find out and try to sort out the confusion, since no-one else was doing that. I succeeded very easily. It all boiled down to the definitions they were/are using. It proves that you imagine, in your own mind, that I'm the one who is using these definitions. Wishful thinking. In fact, if you'd read my long post with any understanding, you would have realised that I am NOT recommending these definitions. I believe they're confused and I understand where the confusion has arisen. The fact that you think I'm recommending definitions of weak or strong is characteristic of both your habitual misrepresentation of other people's posts and also your complete lack of understanding. You're good with words but I don't think you have a high IQ. Either that or something is causing you to become confused. Something in you.
Yes, I know...it's always in the other poster(s).