Chess will never be solved, here's why

...when i wanna run a quick check w/ say less than 1000 samples i use excel. and function out say the 'randarray' w/ its arguments. tests out every time. for this one i also strung in the 'unique' operative (ridding ea black ball along the way). i ran it like 10x's and it tada'ed...goodbye.

The discussion was about drawing with replacement. Your original post was vague on that point.

Interesting that you think you're certain to have pulled the white ball when there are still 37 left in the bag if you do it without replacement. You might want to check that.

I agree with your last sentiment.

(Btw wouldn't it be simpler to just write 1 rather than 1/ln e?)

Better to understand what you're doing. The software and the formulae don't absolve you from that.

ENGLISH OR SPANISH

Cleanup on aisle 5...

O is already 'gone'. Even when he's 'here'.
Yes Dio is well and happy. Somehow O got that one right.
But didn't mean to. He slipped up with the word 'stay'.
In O's world - honesty from him is always a mistake.
Odd but there it is. A kind of self-inflicted pit he shouts from the bottom of.
Its for others to have the main conversations and forum topic conversations.
O isn't competent to do so.
Long Covid because of vaxx denial? Yes that would fit in his case.
And he would have phobias regarding the main science community that is so much more capable than him.
Analagous to flat-earthism.

This point is a good one, but beyond him. He's incapable of realizing that engines are only on a slowly moving plateau that is not the exhaustive end of chess play. This is due to his emotional belief system...he wants Sveshnikov to be right at any cost, and he also desperately wants for humans to still be having a role in ICCF play, but they really don't. What we are seeing is engines hitting a plateau, and human beings already having hit their maximum threshold in terms of being able to make engine play better. ICCF participants are just shuffling results between engines, nothing more. Their "input" in terms of which lines to follow is guided by engines, and when it is not, it is detrimental.

come try war for throne in varients

Hi onedream !
That nice equation you posted wouldn't copy in the quote function.
I'm going to see if it'll copy/paste but I doubt it.
It might post as an 'image' somehow.
No. No go. Neither with paste nor ctrl V nor Win V nor image insertion.
It seemed to rightclick 'copy' though. 
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Anyway regarding Moore's Law I believe it will run into fundamental limits eventually.
But at issue is - when?
To discuss that properly we'd need to have more basics here about 'transistors' in the modern usage of the word and how computer circuitry is laid down in the 'substrate' and so on.
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Regarding the forum topic and 'solved' there's an interpretation availble.
That is that the forum topic actually pertains to all of chess - not just an obscure idea within it.
Yes its not a direct connection but there are many indirect connections.
We can discuss the limitations of computer hardware ...
But we can also discuss the nature of chess as relevant too.
I have some 'difference' with Elroch as to legitimate shortcuts in 'solving' chess.
None of tygxc's 'shortcuts' appear to be legitimate.
But I think many positions can be 'logically solved' including by the computers - with neither gametree 'brute forcing' (much too slow) nor tablebase 'brute-forcing' (only available up to 7 pieces on board anyway)
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One only needs reach positions where it becomes too obvious that one side has no path to drawing its therefore Lost position.
Elroch has argued that computers can't 'think' that way.
Martin has rightly pointed out how even the strongest computers make astounding obvious blunders in assigning wins or draws to positions that are obviously the opposite.
But also being commented about throughout the two year thread is software -
usually with the word 'algorithm'.
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If you're going to have legitimate shortcuts - 
they would have to be software shortcuts.
Algorithms that make logical conclusions.
Is there no such thing? No such artificial intelligence?
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Computers can't assign a win to K+R versus King where there's no stalemate - without referring to a tablebase or 'brute-forcing' through to checkmate?
If there's to be real shortcuts - that's where they're to be found - in that 'without' ...
along with 'logical' algorithms to quickly identify and dismiss 'legally unreachable' positions.
I'm confident by the way - that both are being worked on - but I think the first one hasn't been much discussed here if at all.
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In the astounding positions posted by Martin where Stockfish erroneously assigns a win or draw where a human can quickly see its wrong - 
do other engines make the same mistake if presented with the same positions?
Do they 'catch' Stockfish's errors?

@onedreamingeye
How did you paste that equation here?
It copies fine to my clipboard - I can even see it there using Windows key + V ...
but it refuses to paste.
What is the trick?
I'm hoping to add this option - without adding Word or Excel or any gigantic software of any kind to my computer.
Just tried the chrome extension 'fx'. No go.

@13686

"any distribution is plausible" ++ No. It is not plausible to have 62 games with 0 error, 50 with 2 errors and none with 1 error. It would need all errors to come in pairs.

"It could be extremely likely that errors come in pairs"
++ In previous years ICCF WC Finals had decisive games, i.e. unpaired errors.
The likelihood of them coming in pairs was the same as it is now.

"It's fundamentally wrong trying to calculate odds for a series of events (errors) that are all different and dependant of each other in a way we cannot predict accurately."
++ We can predict from previous ICCF WC finals, which had decisive games, each year fewer.
Now we have reached 0 decisive games, 0 error/game.

Taking a bad analogy: assume you toss a coin 112 times and get 112 heads.
It is disrespectful to compare a 2 year engine assisted WC Finals chess game to a coin toss.
You could say it is a random fluctuation likely to occur with probability 0.5^112 = 2*10^-34. 
A better explanation is the coin is loaded and the probability it is not is 2*10^-34.

@13698

"If you take a large bunch of people who have never played chess before, teach them the rules then get them to play 112 games from a winning KBNvK position, you'll almost certainly get 112 draws." ++ Here are 2 crucial elements:

1. You take people who have never played chess before. The ICCF WC Finals has 17 Finalists who qualified through Preliminaries, Semifinals, Candidates and who use top engines on top hardware (the 4 Russians less so) and 5 days per move. If your bunch of people were jailed and those who win get out, then at 5 days/move some might figure out how to win.
2. You give them a won position to start with, while the initial position of Chess is a draw.
   I proposed you a relevant KRPP vs. KRP position: it is a draw, despite the pawn advantage and despite endgame books prior to the 7-men endgame table base giving it as a white win.

@13699

"engines are only on a slowly moving plateau"
++ But now 0 error/game has been reached at 5 days/move, 2*90 million positions/second.

"he wants Sveshnikov to be right" ++ He was right, whether we want or not.

"humans to still be having a role in ICCF play"
++ The humans are decisive, that is how they qualified for the Finals.
4 of the 17 Finalists are Russian, despite inferior hardware due to sanctions.

The question was, " Do you seriously think that's because they'll all collude to make an odd number of half point blunders?".

You've snipped it off the end and made no attempt to answer. Have you got an answer?

tygxc with the cope posting, and continuing to ignore mathematical rigor.

""any distribution is plausible" ++ No. It is not plausible to have 62 games with 0 error, 50 with 2 errors and none with 1 error. It would need all errors to come in pairs."

And you cant prove that errors cant come in pairs, so its perfectly plausible. you just dont like it and it doesnt make sense to you intuitively so to you it cant exist. but just because there isnt an apparent explanation for an unusual phenomenon doesnt mean an explanation cant exist, until you prove it rigorously.

"4 of the 17 Finalists are Russian, despite inferior hardware due to sanctions." heres something you are missing tygxc. the russians dont necessarily have inferior hardware anymore. the interview you cited only covered a specific time period, during which russians played CONSIDERABLY worse.

"Taking a bad analogy: assume you toss a coin 112 times and get 112 heads."

"A better explanation is the coin is loaded and the probability it is not is 2*10^-34."

actually it doesnt prove anything. it just says that it is PROBABLY the case.

argument by high probability isnt a mathematical proof.

but the coin could be perfectly fair but the flipping method was heavily biased. or any other number of tertiary explanations

tygxc only needs to get one detail wrong and then all his other details are wrong too.
Constantly happens in his posts.
But its predictable. And for two years now.
Its kind of 'innocent' in a way though.
Its kind of like somebody who wouldn't want to know what a chemical element is.
Another way to say it is:
Nobody really has an option to supervise an adult's intellectual spare time 'thinking and nonthinking'.
In professional situations yes.
Or in some family situations.
Or in educational situations.
But this situation here is about as 'unprofessional' at tygxc's end as could be.
And in the situation of tygxc 'relating' to others here and others relating to him.
He has zero 'obligation' to get rid of his disdain for mathematical objectivity.
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This could be understood better if we consider flat-earthism in the public forums here.
I believe its allowed.
Flat-earthism seems less forgivable though. Much less forgivable.

Just ask any flat-earther to come to Zürich and try walking up to my house. That should cure them.

If a game is really a win for one side, finding a weak solution is one way of proving the value of the optimal result that is also sufficient to provide a win against any legal sequence of opponent moves. A player lacking such a proof has no reliable way to find the best move and it only takes a single sub-optimal move to turn the result into a draw.

For something to be mathematically true and for no-one to have knowledge of a proof is a common situation, only recognised for sure at some later time when a proof is found. For example, Fermat's Last Theorem was merely believed to be true (and occasionally believed not to be true) for over 400 years before Andrew Wiles found a proof of it via multiple decades of work (including substantial extra work after presentation for peer review, to fill a hole that had been spotted by his reviewers!) Now it is known to be true, because the proof is complete.

As it happens, this particular theorem is not of a form where it has the analogy of playing a game, but another one that does, and which was first conjectured in 1852 and proved in 1976, with essential use of a computer to check thousands of special cases that would have been impractical for humans for check, is the famous 4 Color Theorem.

The analogy of playing a game for this theorem would be to 4-color a specific graph. While a proof analogous to a weak solution of chess would tell you how to do that with only small computational demand, the proof of the 4-color theorem is analogous to an ultra-weak solution, like most mathematical proofs - I.e. it concludes certain truth but does not tell you how to exhibit a 4-coloring in specific cases. It turns out that for at least one class of graphs, the problem of finding a 4-coloring is NP-complete, which means that it is one of a class of problems where if you have a solution, it is very easy to verify it is one (just check if there is a border with the same colour on both sides!), but exhibiting a solution MAY be difficult (in the strong sense that the time to find one may rise worse than polynomially for any order of polynomial, as the graphs get bigger).

I say MAY, because the enormous class of NP-complete problems has the property that EITHER all of them are polynomially complex (to find solutions) or all of them have higher complexity.

I think most people believe it is the latter, but finding which one it is is one of the great unsolved mathematical problems, with far less reason for optimism that it will be solved than Fermat's Last Theorem provided. [NP-completeness itself only applies to chess as a concept if you introduce some class of games like chess with a range of sizes, eg bigger boards, and consider how hard each is to solve. One game is hard enough for us, even if finite and mathematically trivial in a sense. ]

Bottom line - until chess is solved, it could be lack of knowledge of the solution that causes the best (but inadequate) players to draw all the time, not the fact that chess is a draw.

Personally, I think it is more likely that this is not so, and the optimal result of chess is a draw, but that is just a belief, like @tygxc's.