Chess will never be solved, here's why

I don't gamble...something you should learn yourself for this ill-fated endeavor.

@10954

"a decriptive or a prescriptive definition of the two terms"
believe = 1. to have religious conviction, 2. to have a firm conviction about something: accept as true, 3. to hold as an opinion: suppose - Merriam Webster

know = 1. to perceive directly: have understanding or direct cognition of 2. to be acquainted or familiar with 3. to be aware of the truth of 4. to have practical understanding of - Merriam Webster

"if current computers cant find a win. Why do you assume that a much more powerfull computer also cant find a win?"
++ Current computers find the draw: whatever white tries black has a way to draw. In previous years ICCF WC Finals had decisive games and thus errors, but every year fewer. Future, more powerful computers may be able to reach the same error-free play in less time than 5 days/move, but they cannot go to less than 0 error, what has now been reached.

Are you happy with the bet above for you to profit from your beliefs, @tygxc?

@10956

"I will pay you one penny" "you will pay me $1 million"
++ So you bet 1 to 10^8 that there will be at least 1 decisive game.
I believe the odds for a decisive game are larger: if the odds were 1 to 10^8, then the players would probably agree to a draw right away. The fact that they continue playing indicates that the players estimate the odds higher. If there is a decisive game, then it will be because of human error. I derive that from the decisive games in the previous ICCF WC Finals.

@10960

"a 20 year argument "
++ GM Sveshnikov claimed in 2007
Give me five years, good assistants and the latest computers
- I will bring all openings to technical endgames.

@10961

"TWO WHOLE YEARS"
++ There has been much progress.
Now we have 106 draws out of 106 games in the ICCF World Championship Finals.
It is no longer necessary to rent computers and hire grandmasters for 5 years:
the ICCF World Championship Finalists and their computers do it for free and in 2 years.

So does the title of this. Both equally relevant to solving chess.

I just realized i have been using the wrong vocabulary. Obviusly someone can beleve they know something, and what know know can equaly obviusly be false.

Maybe that is why we keep missunderstanding each other. When I ask how you "know" its a question about epistemology, or how you know that you know. Ive used this example before but if I only have seen 4 leged dogs, i might belive that no 5 legged dog exist, but I can not know that a 5 leged dog does not exist because i prove that it does not exist.

In the same way, i know that in 4 in a row the first player always win. I can show you an algorithem and you can run all posible games and following that algorith the result Will always be the same.

And you kan not know that chess is always a draw because you can not simulate all possible versions of chees. You might strongly belive, and claim tests suggest, but you can not know.

As for the second question its about definitions. You say that "in each gane both players find a draw" whie I say "in al games neither manages to find a win". And while its then solved from your perspective, it would only be true if you could show that the algoeithm for drawing would hold in any move order for both players.

@10966

"how you know that you know" ++ I have played and studied Chess.

"if I only have seen 4 leged dogs, i might belive that no 5 legged dog exist"
++ People believe in Martians, unicorns... As long as no evidence is found that is unjustified.

"i know that in 4 in a row the first player always win" ++ Yes.
Connect Four has been weakly solved in 2 different ways: by calculation of variations and by a set of rules. Later it has been strongly solved.

"you kan not know that chess is always a draw" ++ Yes I can. Hex for example has been ultra-weakly solved, not weakly or strongly. We know the first player wins, but we do not know how.

"the algoeithm for drawing would hold in any move order for both players"
++ The algorithm: follow an ICCF WC Finals draw for as long as possible and then switch to a computer at 5 days/move.

There's other discussions too here.
A discussion of 'solving' chess can be a discussion of chess.
And that happens here too.
And there's a lot to chess.
It was designed to be that way.
Long before computers were even imagined.

You can disable game chat.
You can block trolling people that send you trolling personal messages.
You can reset your settings so that only people on your friends list can message you.
You can kill ads with Adblock. Which is free from Chrome Web Store.
I was using Chrome incognito browser for a bit but it quickly became clear that Adblock doesn't work on incognito.
So I switched back to regular chrome - and delete the browsing data after every use.
You can thoroughly tune up the delete settings so that it deletes much more.
You can reset the Adblock settings to make zapping ads stricter.
Lots of options.

Steinitz claimed that he could give pawn and move to God and still win. And he was world champion so is 100% reliable.

I have had to read alot more then i belived i would when I entered this discusion.

When we say hex is solved it relies on formal logic. That is statements that has to be either true or false . The sentence "the light is on" might be true or false, but "the light is either on or off" = always true, while "the light is on and off" = always false.

Chess has no such proof, you have just played alot of games, and then assume since all of them end in a draw there can not be a win, but that does not follow any formal logic, its just the five leged dog again.

Here is the proof for hex being solved.

1) there is no draw in hex.

This we can prove by contrediction. That is we assume a draw could happend and then show that leads ro a contradiction so that must be false.

Since no player has won that means all hexes are occupied by one of the players, and since no player have won there have to be a hole in both the players continius lines. But that can not be the case becouse if one of the players have a hole in their line the other player would have a continius line going through that hole.

2) there is no zugzwang in hex.

In Hex, each move places a stone on the board without removing or moving previously placed stones. This means each move incrementally builds towards completing a path. The concept of zugzwang does not apply directly because each additional move provides further progress towards creating a winning path, rather than potentially forcing a disadvantage.

3) since there is no zugzwang, and no draw player number 1 can always steal player number 2s strategy. That is player number 1 can place any pice randomly, wait for player two to do their move and copy their strategy. And sice player number 1 always Will have one extra pice on the bord player 1 Will always win.

So you see, hex is solved becouse it logicaly can not be any other way. Even though we dont the algorthm for winning. While in chess we have just had alot of realy powerfull computers play a huge amount of games, but there is still nothing that prevent the possebility that an even stranger computer might find a winning strategy in the future.

Hopfully that just ended the discussion

Two people can both claim to "know" something...take two variants of string theory, for example. They can both be utterly wrong.

Tygxc has just admitted that he thinks there's a larger than 1 in 10^8 chance that one of 30 ICCF games will be decisive. This is outright admitting his premise that these results will "close out chess" is dead wrong.

The 4 legged dog example can simply be one of definition. If you find a 5 legged "dog", what are you defining as a dog? Both sides can argue that such a dog is or is not actually a dog. Currently it would be considered a dog, but a 5 legged mammal is pretty distinct and if the 5 legged dog bred true to produce 5 legged dogs, there would be a lot of arguing over the issue. That's semantics, though.

The proper definition of "weakly solved" means that a bulletproof strategy has been found to secure a win or a draw from the initial position. There's no semantics involved. A strongly solved solution would be one where you can take any chess position, whether already "off the track" of the weakly solved strategy, and still solve for it, win or draw, regardless of starting position. People can argue whether the nomenclature sucks or not...it doesn't matter, the meaning behind the two concepts remains the same.

Weakly solved = prove perfect play once, from beginning to end

Strongly solved = prove perfect play from any position, even starting with an imperfect position

The reason for the distinction is fairly obvious...if you had a weak solution, you could call chess solved as a game from the initial position, but you would not be able to plug in any position you liked to the database/tablebase and have a result back telling you win or draw. That would require a strong solution.

There's no way to add a viable "fifth leg" to these definitions, so Tygxc, Optimissed, etc. are out of luck there. Note also that "we can't possibly have a strong solution within our current universe as it is understood. ergo we have to fudge it" is not an argument. You can design "games" that allow for for various combinations of ultra-weakly, weakly, and strongly solved, or do not allow any reasonable path to such solutions.

If you changed the rules of chess to "white makes 4 moves to start the game", then scholar's mate would immediately become a solution to the game and chess would be weakly solved, but still not strongly solved.

If you changed the rules for rock-paper-scissors to "the first player announces their choice, then the second player makes their response", then the "game" would become solved, and the second player would win every game with "perfect play". it would also become a ridiculous endeavor, but that does not change the point.

A weak solution is possible, in our universe, but it's way out of mankind's reach as things sit, and the reduction of 10^44 to 10^17 does not work. I have made the analogy numerous times on this thread and others that Tygxc proposes to build a bridge where one end is steel (tablebases), and one end is mud and sticks (all his blathering about imperfect engine play). The mud and sticks part of his bridge currently makes up 99.N% of the bridge, where N is based on the massive difference between a 7 or 8 man tablebase and a 32 man tablebase.

im sorry, but your definition is somewhat wrong

A super weak solve is that we know one of the players can force a result from the starting position with perfect play (but we dont know how)

A weak solve is that we have a super weak solve for any position that might occure.

A strong solve is that we know the strategy for one of the players to force a result.

According to whom?