tygxc knows the engines aren't perfect.
He's already conceded that.
But that means in turn that his other claims are false. Wrong.
But as so often happens with illogic - the 'illogician' doesn't care.
Chess will never be solved, here's why
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Jul 19, 2024
0
#11022
Jul 19, 2024
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#11023
playerafar wrote:
tygxc knows the engines aren't perfect.
Yes, half the time he argues a person magically makes the engine perfect, and his argument for their perfection is that other people were imperfect enough to lose. By this reasoning I am perfect because I beat someone.
He's already conceded that.
But that means in turn that his other claims are false. Wrong.
But as so often happens with illogic - the 'illogician' doesn't care.
Jul 19, 2024
0
#11024
VerifiedChessYarshe wrote:
tygxc wrote:
@14326
"True or perfect endings are not possible" ++ They are.
"You can't tell the difference between e4 and d4" ++ No difference, both draw.
"The true end will never be achieved" ++ It is being done now: 113 draws out of 113 games.
"There are more than 2 best moves" ++ 1 e4 and 1 d4 are played now, also 1 Nf3.
1 c4 was played in the previous ICCF WC Finals.
"You don't understand what "true end" we are talking about." ++ Please explain.
Explain how a "true end" may be achieved. ICCF WC is not a valuable source, it isn't apart of this party.
First of all define "true end".
When you say, "a perfect game ends in: ???", that would normally be taken to refer to a game with perfect play. The "???" is not a specific number in that case.
E.g., a position with the following diagram is a theoretical draw under both basic rules or competition rules.
It can be drawn in a minimum of two ply (e.g. 1.White offers draw ...Black accepts draw) or in any number of ply (including ℵ₀ under basic rules - arguably limited under competition rules), all with perfect play.
Syzygy plays the positions it addresses perfectly under both basic and competition rules, but from winning positions the "???" is variable depending on which of a large number of solutions it offers is chosen from a forced mate half tree.
E.g. these are both examples of Syzygy playing mate perfectly from the position shown (the first it's best attempt at accuracy)
Or a Nalimov version (which can also play this particular position perfectly under both sets of rules).
Note the discrepency in ???.
@14339
"a fortress position is irrelevant if Stockfish never lets you get it" ++ Stockfish happily goes for +5 evaluation and does not recognise the fortress. It even does not recognise a dead position.
"Jon Edwards is talking about an engine that would beat him. Whose evaluation is to be trusted?" ++ Edwards of course, he knows both.
"I bet the Russians made fewer clerical errors." ++ Maybe they have more discipline. However, not all decisive games are clerical errors or due to illness. Several are due to opening choice or wrong engine evaluation exploited by the human.
"Where is your documentation of the exact difference in hardware the Russians had?"
++ 'the lack of decent equipment is being felt quite notably in Russia, where embargoes have limited access to new hardware and the latest chess tools' - Edwards
'Computers are stronger abroad' - Dronov
Jul 19, 2024
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#11026
Somehow - some pages/posts appear to have just now disappeared.
With posts by several posters disappearing with them.
Jul 19, 2024
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#11027
tygxc wrote:
@14328
"ICCF WC is not a valuable source" ++ it is. It is the strongest chess on the planet.
ok and? it's not rigorously proven so it's not a valuable source.
Jul 19, 2024
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#11028
tygxc why arent you addressing the core fact that any statement about a solution of chess must be rigorously mathematically proven with more than just engine games and your personal feelings?
Jul 19, 2024
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#11029
VerifiedChessYarshe wrote:
#14296
3-fold repetition does not ensure a finite game. Some positions that don't have checks make this rule ineffective.
Did you understand why it's unnecessary to ensure a finite game to allow for a solution? The finite number of positions already guarantees a solution.
If no checks can occur in any continuation from a position, that ensures a finite game because the game immediately terminates under the dead position rule.
In such positions, 3-fold repetition will only work after hundreds of continuous shuffling. The 50-move rule is the only and only way to ensure a game will not go that long, that's why the longest chess game mathematically is 8848 moves.
Not in all. In some positions the 3-fold repetition will necessarily occur before 50 moves (assuming you ignore the dead position rule).
There is no true end for chess. Soon, some computers will eventually replace Stockfish, millions of lines may be lurking in the shadows, waiting for our intelligence to find it and do even more crazy stuff. There is no true end.
Jul 19, 2024
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#11030
MEGA is correct.
tygxc continues to assert 'hey these engines are really Strong!'
but he refuses to concede that that doesn't prove anything.
Djokovic is really Strong - but he just lost to young Alcazar.
Carlos A. is a 'marvel'. A genius and athlete.
Apparently even more 'complete' than Novak is.
And that's going a long way.
Will Novak's knees last long enough to 'solve' it?
We don't know and if we're wise we don't care.
But that doesn't mean it isn't interesting.
MARattigan wrote:
VerifiedChessYarshe wrote:
tygxc wrote:
@14326
"True or perfect endings are not possible" ++ They are.
"You can't tell the difference between e4 and d4" ++ No difference, both draw.
"The true end will never be achieved" ++ It is being done now: 113 draws out of 113 games.
"There are more than 2 best moves" ++ 1 e4 and 1 d4 are played now, also 1 Nf3.
1 c4 was played in the previous ICCF WC Finals.
"You don't understand what "true end" we are talking about." ++ Please explain.
Explain how a "true end" may be achieved. ICCF WC is not a valuable source, it isn't apart of this party.
First of all define "true end".
When you say, "a perfect game ends in: ???", that would normally be taken to refer to a game with perfect play. The "???" is not a specific number in that case.
E.g., a position with the following diagram is a theoretical draw under both basic rules or competition rules.
It can be drawn in a minimum of two ply (e.g. 1.White offers draw ...Black accepts draw) or in any number of ply (including ℵ₀ under basic rules - arguably limited under competition rules), all with perfect play.
Syzygy plays the positions it addresses perfectly under both basic and competition rules, but from winning positions the "???" is variable depending on which of a large number of solutions it offers is chosen from a forced mate half tree.
E.g. these are both examples of Syzygy playing mate perfectly from the position shown (the first it's best attempt at accuracy)
Or a Nalimov version (which can also play this particular position perfectly under both sets of rules).
Note the discrepency in ???.
True end in this case refers to a perfect game and that there is no way you can go further. A game ends with players play with precision up to 100%. Unfortunately, computers can't have an answer to that. There are no best moves. e4,d4,c4, and f4 are white's choices, while you can tell a difference between e4 and f4, it is hard to tell the difference between d4 and e4. Generally speaking, chess will always have 2 best moves which will result in a similar outcome, 2 best lines or ways that still may have the same outcome, making the game doesn't have a true end.
In this case, if white is SF 16, he would checkmate black quicker than a player using the simple method to checkmate where you box him to the corner and checkmate.
some positions may require white or black to play 100% accurately to win. How to achieve those positions? the opposing team must play a wrong move or line that puts him in a tough situation in the first place, so this situation is removed as it is not perfect in the beginning.
The position above shows that a bishop is being attacked. Any square that it moves to that doesn't hang itself to the rook will put black in a losing position. Each bishop retreat move decides different outcomes. it is impossible to have a best move. There are better examples, like how would you play the Sicilian, most of them are not bad and some will make you not tell a difference between one of them.
Jul 19, 2024
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#11032
MARattigan wrote:
VerifiedChessYarshe wrote:
#14296
3-fold repetition does not ensure a finite game. Some positions that don't have checks make this rule ineffective.
Did you understand why it's unnecessary to ensure a finite game to allow for a solution? The finite number of positions already guarantees a solution.
The (hypothetical) generation of a basic chess tablebase makes this explicit. Basic chess has no 3-fold repetition rule nor any rule like the 50 move rule. Players have to agree a draw if there is no stalemate.
The way the tablebase generation works is that it is done for a single combination of pieces on the board at a time. Smaller numbers of pieces are dealt with first historically, and it is clear it is worth dealing with them in order of number of pawns on the board from there (starting with no pawns). See below for why
With a chosen set of pieces, you can start with all random positions with no values being known.
Those that are obviously illegal can be eliminated, but this does not need to be thorough.
Pass 1 identifies which positions have mate on the board. It could also identify stalemate on the board, but this is not essential, so we'll ignore it. The value of these positions is set.
A single partial forward pass is needed, to see which positions have legal captures or promotions to get to a position of known value (in a previously calculated tablebase). Other moves can be ignored for now (because they don't leave the current tablebase).
Pass 2 does retrograde analysis just from those positions whose value was determined in pass 1. This is like playing chess backwards - it works out all positions from which a legal move would reach the position. This can be an uncapture or an unpromotion, but the former would be moving to a larger tablebase, so is not done at this point.
This identifies all positions where a player can play a move to mate. This determines the value of those positions.
Pass 3 does retrograde analysis from those positions. This is a little different because of the different objective. It identifies positions where a player could play so that they get mated, but, more importantly, for some of those positions all legal moves are now seen to lead to being mated. The value of these positions is now clear.
Later passes use the latest set of positions with a clear value to generate a new set of positions with a clear value.
At some point a step occurs when no new positions with a clear value are generated. Not only do we now know the value of all positions with a clear value (winning or losing for the player to play), all the others are now known to have a value of a draw.
In basic chess we can imagine people playing infinite games, ignoring the inevitable 3-fold repetitions, but we can know that if neither player blunders, neither player can win. We consider that a draw for theoretical purposes, although for practical purposes it is merely a permanent failure to win!
Adding in a repetition rule or a n-move rule for drawing makes it finite, which saves a lot of time.
[I'd like to think the above may be a bit clearer than the description at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endgame_tablebase#Generating_tablebases but it also has some more detail.
Elroch wrote:
MARattigan wrote:
VerifiedChessYarshe wrote:
#14296
3-fold repetition does not ensure a finite game. Some positions that don't have checks make this rule ineffective.
Did you understand why it's unnecessary to ensure a finite game to allow for a solution? The finite number of positions already guarantees a solution.
The generation of a basic chess tablebase makes this explicit. The way this works is that you first of all start with all positions. Those that are obviously illegal can be eliminated, but this does not need to be thorough.
Pass 1 identifies which positions have mate on the board. It could also identify stalemate on the board, but this is not essential, so we'll ignore it. The value of these positions is set.
Pass 2 does retrograde analysis just from those positions whose value was determined in pass 1. This is like playing chess backwards - it works out all positions from which a legal move would reach the position. This can be an uncapture or an unpromotion.
This identifies all positions where a player can play a move to mate. This determines the value of those positions.
Pass 3 does retrograde analysis from those positions. This is a little different because of the different objective. It identifies positions where a player could play so that they get mated, but, more importantly, for some of those positions all legal moves are now seen to lead to being mated. The value of these positions is now clear.
Later passes use the latest set of positions with a clear value to generate a new set of positions with a clear value.
At some point a step occurs when no new positions with a clear value are generated. Not only do we now know the value of all positions with a clear value (winning or losing for the player to play), all the others are now known to have a value of a draw.
In basic chess we can imagine people playing infinite games, ignoring the inevitable 3-fold repetitions, but we can know that if neither player blunders, neither player can win. We consider that a draw for theoretical purposes, although for practical purposes it is merely a permanent failure to win!
Adding in a repetition rule or a n-move rule for drawing makes it finite, which saves a lot of time.
if you do not add the 50-move rule, 3-fold repetition, and many rules that help to end the game, the game is infinite, with no solutions.
Here, with those rules, such endgames like this will always end in a draw, commonly by the 50-move rule. White and black may freely move anything without any result if it's not for those rules, this game is endless.
MARattigan wrote:
VerifiedChessYarshe wrote:
#14296
3-fold repetition does not ensure a finite game. Some positions that don't have checks make this rule ineffective.
Did you understand why it's unnecessary to ensure a finite game to allow for a solution? The finite number of positions already guarantees a solution.
If no checks can occur in any continuation from a position, that ensures a finite game because the game immediately terminates under the dead position rule.
_There are a finite number of positions even without those rules. The problem is that players could just shuffle endlessly. What counts as finite chess? A finite chess is a finite chess board with finite chess pieces, its duration is finite, not infinite. That's why we need those rules, otherwise it would still be infinite, and without any results it is technically infinite.
In such positions, 3-fold repetition will only work after hundreds of continuous shuffling. The 50-move rule is the only and only way to ensure a game will not go that long, that's why the longest chess game mathematically is 8848 moves.
Not in all. In some positions the 3-fold repetition will necessarily occur before 50 moves (assuming you ignore the dead position rule).
There is no true end for chess. Soon, some computers will eventually replace Stockfish, millions of lines may be lurking in the shadows, waiting for our intelligence to find it and do even more crazy stuff. There is no true end.
llama_l wrote:
... I don't think humans can add anything anymore. For top players the paradigm has changed. Instead of ignoring the engine when it suggests something objectively wrong, they ignore it because in spite of being correct it's impractical because they can't understand.
Caruana told an interesting story on the c squared podcast about banging his head against a position, not understanding why it was supposedly winning. Finally he had this idea, to have a lesser engine (something like 3200 strength) play it out to see how it would win... but that engine couldn't win it (only draw). After that Caruana gave up trying to understand why it was a win because a player much better than him (3200 engine) couldn't do it either.
Fascinating! And I appreciate Fabiano's candor with this kind of stuff - it gives an interesting glimpse into how top players think and analyze.
It's also a pretty heavy point, when a player of Caruana's level is unable to fathom an engine's ideas. How are we supposed to expect that ICCF competitors (who are several levels weaker than Fabiano, in terms of chess-playing ability) are capable of navigating top engine analyses with a competency that somehow enhances the engines' abilities?
Given their playing ability from OTB ratings, it's fair to assume that many of the chess decisions these players make would be considered "poor" or "the wrong idea" by a player of Caruana's level - a result of simply not being a strong enough player to know better ... But they'd still let the engine crunch these suboptimal tries for days, just to see what happens ...
Still, I understand there's a sense of pride for these players - you can read it in their interviews. They love talking about their correspondence games, and are excited to talk about their accomplishments.
I can respect that - we all deserve to feel pride and confidence in what we do.
But it might be a form of psychological self-defense at this point ... to continue to believe that they're still conducting the orchestra - while in reality, the orchestra appears to be capable of playing just fine without them ...
Jul 19, 2024
0
#11036
VerifiedChessYarshe wrote:
Elroch wrote:
MARattigan wrote:
VerifiedChessYarshe wrote:
#14296
3-fold repetition does not ensure a finite game. Some positions that don't have checks make this rule ineffective.
Did you understand why it's unnecessary to ensure a finite game to allow for a solution? The finite number of positions already guarantees a solution.
The generation of a basic chess tablebase makes this explicit. The way this works is that you first of all start with all positions. Those that are obviously illegal can be eliminated, but this does not need to be thorough.
Pass 1 identifies which positions have mate on the board. It could also identify stalemate on the board, but this is not essential, so we'll ignore it. The value of these positions is set.
Pass 2 does retrograde analysis just from those positions whose value was determined in pass 1. This is like playing chess backwards - it works out all positions from which a legal move would reach the position. This can be an uncapture or an unpromotion.
This identifies all positions where a player can play a move to mate. This determines the value of those positions.
Pass 3 does retrograde analysis from those positions. This is a little different because of the different objective. It identifies positions where a player could play so that they get mated, but, more importantly, for some of those positions all legal moves are now seen to lead to being mated. The value of these positions is now clear.
Later passes use the latest set of positions with a clear value to generate a new set of positions with a clear value.
At some point a step occurs when no new positions with a clear value are generated. Not only do we now know the value of all positions with a clear value (winning or losing for the player to play), all the others are now known to have a value of a draw.
In basic chess we can imagine people playing infinite games, ignoring the inevitable 3-fold repetitions, but we can know that if neither player blunders, neither player can win. We consider that a draw for theoretical purposes, although for practical purposes it is merely a permanent failure to win!
Adding in a repetition rule or a n-move rule for drawing makes it finite, which saves a lot of time.
if you do not add the 50-move rule, 3-fold repetition, and many rules that help to end the game, the game is infinite, with no solutions.
I just explained that for theoretical purposes, a failure for either side to be able to force a win can be defined to be a draw, and that the exact positions where this is so can be determined algorithmically (with enough time). That is a solution of the game. As a result, basic chess is the simplest form of chess to solve, despite permitting infinite games. (Admittedly still way too computationally demanding to be practical!)
In practical basic chess, it is always up to the players to agree a draw. Note that infinite games are also theoretically possible where there is a repetition or n-move rule but it requires players to claim it! This has not stopped such chess being played.
In any case, it's no theoretical or algorithmic problem.
Jul 19, 2024
0
#11037
Another good point by Elroch.
Even with the 50 move rule - a claim of draw is required so games infinite in number of moves become possible?
Well the lifespans of the two players are not infinite but if its 'vote-chess' where descendants of the players are allowed to enter the game later on then yes it becomes 'infinite'.
But that needs qualification ...
'potentially infinite'.
Because it assumes humanity would continue infinitely.
Which might not happen.
Jul 19, 2024
0
#11038
I think more to a main point is the issue of whether 'logical algorithms' become possible whereby the computer can take legitimate shortcuts.
If the computer is limited to its numerical evaluation and 'horizon' and 7 piece tablebases then apparently it can't figure out things that humans easily figure out like certain positions where its obviously drawn and the engine can't realize it.
We've got such a position posted in this forum.
Jul 19, 2024
0
#11040
playerafar wrote:
I think more to a main point is the issue of whether 'logical algorithms' become possible whereby the computer can take legitimate shortcuts.
If the computer is limited to its numerical evaluation and 'horizon' and 7 piece tablebases then apparently it can't figure out things that humans easily figure out like certain positions where its obviously drawn and the engine can't realize it.
We've got such a position posted in this forum.
could you repost that?
No, a fortress position is irrelevant if Stockfish never lets you get it.
Jon Edwards is talking about an engine that would beat him. Whose evaluation is to be trusted?
You've given a list of reasons decisive games occur and explained that the players blundered. I bet the Russians made fewer clerical errors.
Where is your documentation of the exact difference in hardware the Russians had?