Chess will never be solved, here's why

Touch move is dumber but it doesn't mess up the game as much. It's equivalent to a rule saying both the knights must face the same direction. The 50 move rule totally screws up the most interesting complex and beautiful aspects of the game. Imagine someone in a tournament avoiding getting into a winning endgame because it might not be won in 50 moves. Those amazing KRKKNN 250+ move endgames are just pure chess, no vague strategies or general principles, you just have to make the exact moves for hundreds of moves straight to force the win, pure geometry.

Also there's no evidence to suggest that the 50 move rule even speeds up games. A game could go over 5,300 moves with the rule, yet the longest chess game on record ever is like 260 moves. The longest world championship game was only 136 moves, would it really have been a big deal if these games were this long and violated the 50 move rule? I really want to see an argument of a classical game that would have gone on for 500-1000 if the 50 move rule wasn't enforced. Just one.

The repetition of positions gets prohibitive already with just KRK if you want to cover all possible situations. If you're only interested in positions with no repeats under 9.2.3 you can simply ignore it because the tablebase generated play will not itself produce any repeats. For a weak solution of chess it's sufficient to consider only positions with ply count 0 under 9.3, which always occur first and can't have any repeats.

The 50 move rule will probably not cause tablebase generation to become prohibitive if it's not already without.The Syzygy tables already cover the 50 move rule, so it's only an issue if you want quickest mates (DTM50).

There are, up to 7 men, a tiny percentage of winning positions that need more than a 50 move rule. Up to 26 pieces you can expect that percentage to drop dramatically because the classifications become swamped with endgames that have a large mismatch in material which should lead to short phases in the mates. And the positions that do need more moves don't need anything like 100 times the space, even for DTM50 tablebases, because the variations in play fall into a few ranges of ply counts.

With well known easy mates like KRK and KBNK maybe the 50 move rule should apply to those. But it shouldn't apply to more complex endgames.

It doesn't under FIDE basic rules. The rule actually makes the more complex endgames even more complex.

That one doesn't have the rule or is that the 75-arbiter-can-declare-draw rule? 50 with no exceptions, 50 with some exceptions for 100, or 100 with no exceptions, all make more sense than the 75 nonsense. At that point you might as well base it on a prime number like 53 or 97. Personally I would love to see a grandmaster chess game that goes on for thousands of moves and ends with a decisive result (checkmate, stalemate, 3 fold, or insufficient mating material). I wish they would ban draws by agreement in at least 1 world championship match!

The touch move rule is not dumb at all. Nor is the 50 move rule.
No need for me to read in that post past the false claim that it is.

Hi Martin.
Regarding just three or four men on board - I would think that adding in the 50 move rule would not be tough for the computers in the tablebase projects - nor to write fast software for it.
For humans it would be laborious to tablebase such a thing.
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Regarding the 50 move rule becoming very prohibitive for positions even with just 7 pieces on board and even more prohibitive for a lot more pieces -
my point isn't about the amount of 'computer space' but more about particular possibilities about the software and programming and issues within the code.
I think the issue of the tablebases assigning a win with an upper bound on the number of moves to mate instead of an exact solution or minimum is relevant.
But there's the viccissitudes of that software.
Which with its hardware apparently averaged solution of about 32 million positions per second. At seven pieces. I would expect slower with 8 pieces.
The point: speed to be prioritized.
The software is probably very intricate.
And the 50 move rule 'cant cut it.' On speed. Neither can castling.
Given the number of years it took them to do seven pieces ... even without those ... uh oh!

So if the players played this without prefixing it with thousands of moves, would you count that as an agreed draw or a decisive result?

Martin I didn't solve that excellent puzzle yet you posted earlier.
When I try to solve a chess puzzle I don't try to 'crunch it'.
I look for a 'path to solution'. Can be distinguished from 'themes'.
I've done thousands of tactics puzzles on the website.
And for years have been doing them unrated and with no timer.
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Many of the kids are 'bothered by the timer' and go crazy over 'injustice' over the ratings points awards or penalties.
So chess.com changed the tactics rating system to oblige them.
Apparently for marketing purposes with the idea that the site is a chess restaurant rather than a chess boot camp. Smart move!
When I do solve accurately I still often can't see the whole solution and have to play one move at a time plus see what the reply is.
So often advisable because the reply move is often a weird unexpected reply move. Among other reasons.
If I can't find a best move then I just pick a move on principle and expect to be wrong. I call that 'honest admission'.
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Great puzzle you posted though!

I added a sentence clarifying while you were posting that.

The 50 move rule is going to complicate tablebase generation only if you're interested in finding shortest mates (DTM50 tables) but finding shortest wins is necessary for neither weakly nor strongly solving a game, only finding wins is necessary. A DTZ50 generation works only with basic rules positions and just stops unmoving after 50 unmoves. (Syzygy is DTZ50 plus to work also under basic rules.) It also finds all winning positions but there are fewer of these when the 50 move rule is in force than when it's not, so any idea that the 50 move rule would somehow be prohibitive for DTZ50 or Syzygy tables compared with DTM tables is misguided. The opposite should be true for DTZ50 tables. The DTM50 tables have to take the ply count into consideration so are larger, but I gave some reasons why I think this will probably not prove prohibitive compared with DTM tables at any stage.

The tables will become prohibitively large and computationally intensive with equipment of the sort we currently have, but the 50 move rule is not the cause.

The 50 move will on the other hand considerably increase the difficulty of a forward search.

Martin I read through your post just now.
As often happens with your posts I'll probably read through it again at least once.
1) One of my arguments is that if things like castling and the 50 move rule weren't so prohibitive they would have worked them in already.
2) Another argument is 'intricacies of programming and software'.
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Now very possibly you're the most informed person here about the tablebases and perhaps you're a professional programmer too.
If you mentioned that I forgot.
But in any case I would tend to believe and trust in everything you say.
But paradoxically - well you see my arguments #1 and #2 above.
Also paradoxical - an argument that the tablebases so far are 'prototypes'.
But three years is quite a long time to take on a prototype.
Some calculations I posted in the forum earlier indicated a needed time of 4.8 years total for the 8-piece tablebase. But that's without castling and 50 moves and repetition of position. And that calculation based on an average speed of 32 million positions solved per second.
It could be a lot slower with eight pieces on board.
I would expect it to be.

And Martin I did see your argument regarding 'percentage of positions' ...
but if that makes the problem of 50 move rule 'minor' then how come they didn't factor it in?
Similiar with castling. Only a small percentage of positions with seven pieces would have at least one King and at least one of its rooks on their home squares.
Why didn't they factor it in?
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Regarding the 50 - which would mean only having a reduced number of moves available to win the game - or be compelled to move a pawn (if there is one) or to capture (if that's available) - well those are different issues involving 'number of moves' and I can understand why the project would skip those and skip repetition of position too because it pertains too much to previous positions and 'game' instead of 'position'.
But with castling its different because that's an actual move on the board that's being ruled out. Not good.
'Small percentage of positions' but the software still has to factor it in and at 32 million positions per second they don't want to.

I came to this point expecting to see something insanely profound, and ended up witnessing what is quite possibly the most downvoted post on the whole site.

I am not disappointed, just confused.

About what?
With current technology chess will not be solved for trillions of years.
Simple as that.
And the earth will be engulfed by the sun long before then.
Unless you will have a fancy spaceship that can somehow sustain humanity for those trillions of Yars. And they'd have better things to do than ... right.
Would be quite a Yarn. Lieutenant Yar?

@Fr3nchToastCrunch

The question is interesting, if ambiguous (both "chess" and "solved" are ambiguous). The downvotes probably reflect that many people think OP's proffered answer is crap. (I would agree.)

chess will not be solved for trillions of years

thatsa little much...doncha feel ?

the earth will be engulfed by the sun

kinda dramatic...ykw ?...i think uv been watching too much tv

The touch move rule is not dumb at all.

im good w/this one. just so u dont move it outta the square - and airborne ? ..no.

which triggers a viewfoil question. can u throw a piece across the parlor and NOT get DQ'ed ? ...like say at tata steel ?

Whoever can be 'sorry' all he wants to be.

sorry playerafar for witching u out the other day. (not sorry - just teezing lol ! ..what would i do w/out him ?)

Reminds me of the guy who used to begin with he's 'afraid'.

re: thee arguments when we were little kids ? ..."fraid not" ... "fraid so". lol !

just curious ...just made 1700. been playing chess for like 40 yrs. just wanna know what its gonna take to be a super grandpatzer. thots ? ...playerafar ? (hes never shorta words)