Chess will never be solved, here's why

@8216

"you assume that thats whats going to happen"
++ I am sure that is what is going to happen. As calculated there will be at most 1 error in 10^20 positions and there are only 10^17 positions, so 0 error expected in the procedure.

Anyway, if a white win were found in a line, then and only then a black move needs retracting.

Besides, theoretically it were possible to weakly solve Chess with just a generator of legal moves, without any provisional evaluation at all by a Monte-Carlo method.
Select a random white legal move, select a random black response and so on until a 7-men endgam table base position, or a 3-fold repetition, or a checkmate, or a stalemate.
If white wins, then retact the last black move.
If black wins or draws, then retract the last white move.
Continue until the initial position.
Chess is weakly solved then.
It is theoretically possible, but would take more time than the proposed method to use Stockfish to generate better than random moves.

do you know how many games of chess are possible

I appreciate the information and advice you have shared.

"  I am sure that is what is going to happen. As calculated there will be at most 1 error in 10^20 positions and there are only 10^17 positions, so 0 error expected in the procedure."

that hasnt been calculated lmao

@8224

"that hasnt been calculated"
++ This HAS been calculated

Figure 2
1 s / move: 11.8% decisive games
1 min / move: 2.1% decisive games

Extrapolating:
1 h / move: 2.1% * 2.1 / 11.8 = 0.4% decisive games
60 h / move: 2.1% * (2.1 / 11.8)² = 0.07% decisive games
Converting to 17 s at 10^9 nodes/s and assuming 100 positions/game:
1 error in 10^5 positions
Hence 1 occurence in 10^20 positions that the table base exact move is not among the top 4 engine moves.

@8226

"disagree with statement ...regards a theorem as completely certain without proof"
It is a fact that the famous mathematician Euler - after thinking about it - regarded Goldbach's conjecture as a completely certain theorem without a proof. He wrote that.
Provability is a higher degree of truth.

@8222

"do you know how many games of chess are possible
++ Labelle has calculated between 10^29241 and 10^34082 games.
There are 10^44 legal positions.
Of these 10^17 are relevant to weakly solving Chess.

Yes, I encountered this objection in discussions with Elroch. In my opinion it's a mistake, however, to allow ourselves to be led in our thinking by machines which have been programmed always to represent outcomes as conditional probability. Elroch argued that it is not so that they are programmed like that. There was nothing more really that I could say, in the face of such a glaring contempt for reality.

@8320

Euler never saw Vinogradov's theorem either, but he might have reasoned along those lines.
If Euler was allowed to regard Goldbach's conjecture as a completely certain theorem without a formal proof, then so can we regard Chess as a draw without a formal proof based on all the available evidence.

DEAR OP,

This is your 15 minutes of fame, congratulations. 👏 👏

I don’t know how you did it, but this lame thread just won’t die. Chess will never be solved, just like Jazz will never be solved. 

I will honor you with a quote:
“Talking about music is like dancing about go f*** yourself” -TROLLKING

Actually, regarding something as truth is a decision made on the basis of strong evidence. Regarding a deduction as correct, is the result of regarding all the premises on which it's based as correct, valid and sufficient to bring about the effect of a deduction, which is the conclusion.

A decision that a deduction is correct may be either correct or incorrect. If it's regarding new territory and if it's complex and difficult, there is naturally more chance of this decision being incorrect than there would be if the deduction were simple and clear. Solving chess is so incredibly difficult, as seems to be shown even by this conversation, that if it were apparently solved, we wouldn't really know if it was solved correctly. This leads to the conclusion that it is reasonable to assume that we will never know, with complete certainty, whether chess has been solved, even if we think we've solved it. The effect of this is that we're thrown back upon on our own resources of intuition and evidence gathering, in exactly the same way as we were, before we were able to believe we may one day solve chess.

Again, it's a matter of personal conviction and, probably, personality type. This is the second time I've typed this within 24 hours. But a personality type that chooses to avoid certainty may well avoid the worst errors, whilst a personality type that chooses to judge as if it is with certainty may make an error but stands much more chance of far greater success. One personality type is not right and the other wrong. Therefore, it is perfectly correct to claim that we know that chess is a draw.

The demented parrot strikes again! 

I'll repeat what I wrote in post #7503:

++ I have even quantified the error rate: 1 error in 10^5 positions for a 10^9 nodes/s engine calculating 17 s/move.

The flaws in your method have already been pointed out.

You say here 

Your desktop is 1000 times slower than a cloud engine of 10^9 nodes/s. Time * 60 gives 5.6 times less error. 

If you were to look at these games as you steadfastly refuse to do, you will notice that four of them were played at 37 mins. per move. According to your figures, 17 sec. per move on your cloud engine is equivalent to about seven and a half times the time I  allocated on my desktop, so according to your "calculation" these games should have 1 half point blunder in around 42,500 ply.

The four games have a total of 290 ply so according to your "calculation", the expected total number of half point blunders in the games is about 0.007.

User @cobra91 has carefully checked the actual total with the Syzygy tablebase here. It comes to 11.

YOUR CALCULATIONS DON'T WORK. CAN YOU STOP POSTING THEM, PLEASE?

The answer is obviously ++No.

Except that in this case any person's willingness to "take a risk" with their conclusion is, in fact, wrong, by definition.  This topic is not about whether chess is a draw.  It's about whether it can be proven to be a draw.  The answer is no, for the foreseeable future of humanity.

Scroll up to the top of page.  Now read the thread title.  Do you see the word "draw"?

Where did Euler say that?

Basically it can't be proven to be a draw deductively. But we know it's a draw and that isn't a guess.

You probably wouldn't understand that.

tygxc's method depends on it being a draw. I pointed out to him that wouldn't satisfy those demanding a deductive answer, however unrealistic their expectations may be.

Thanks anyway because you did sum the situation up well enough from a particular point of view which I don't share but which I recognise as valid.

Few rational people would.

Yes I'm sure that's correct. You have to be intelligent too.

Dumb question I suppose. Let’s say chess is solved by a super computer. Does it change anything for us? We can’t even figure out how to beat a sub optimal stockfish.

No, you just have to use words in a different way from everybody else, as you claim the right to do. In this case you use the word "know" to refer to the concept that others refer to as "guess".

Not sure what you use "guess* for, given that you say  you know and it isn't a guess. Probably if you have paranormal abilities you can mean the same and different things in one sentence. 

That would depend on whether the solution is a relatively short win or not. 

If it turns out to be forced win in say less than a hundred moves it would be possible to follow and we may as well all give up playing.

If it turns out to be a draw or a win in 2000 moves it would make very little difference,. Youl'd just get different opening theory with a lot more lines, but it would be impossible to follow for any great number of moves,