Chess will never be solved, here's why

1) No deductive proof is possible, based on current knowledge. You should know that.

2) Only a rather dim person would insist on being given something that they knew did not exist, unless they were attempting to deceive someone.

3) Therefore you are either attempting to deceive someone or are rather dim.

hmm

3 piece endings.

Accurately is harder than perfectly. 5 piece endings if you mean perfectly.

They'll generally fail a randomly chosen White win in KNNvKP for example. (The average mate depth of White wins in basic rules in that endgame is around 58 full moves - unknown under competition rules, could be higher or lower.)

Last version of Rybka I got (rather old now) couldn't do KBNvK mates (4 piece).

But note that there is a lot of provably correct theory for endgames with a small number of men (including KNNvKP and KBNvK) and SF at least has tailored tweaks to it's static evaluations based on such theory. It might be expected to do better in those endgames than say 20 piece endgames where such tweaks are not possible.

hmm

@13480

"They'll generally fail a randomly chosen White win in KNNvKP for example."

1. As it is a win, it is irrelevant to weakly solving chess, which is a draw, i.e. cannot be reached from the initial position with optimal play from both sides.
2. At blitz speed, not at 5 days per move as in ICCF.
3. It shows human superiority: Troitsky (1866 - 1942) solved it when computers did not yet exist.

hmm

"The dilution effect" is an imperfect engine evaluation in a position reached by imperfect engine play. That's the fundemental problem here that leads us nowhere in this discussion.

tygxc assumes that chess is a draw as part of the solution - so by definition whatever tygxc comes up with cannot be a solution, as its own creation assumes what it is trying to prove.

in addition, a weak solution by definition deals with inoptimal moves. not only as part of the solution tree/algorithm itself, but in addition as the moves needed to calculate what the tree/algorithm is.

you'll notice how tygxc will never address this.

its also funny how optimissed cant understand the concept of a rhetorical question.

I agree with you and it's obvious, or should be, that translating gain and loss in terms of pawn units is perhaps their fundamental weakness. This is because a pawn doesn't win a game by itself. Wins are generally the result of a successful, checkmating attack on the oppponent's K, which is usually the result of tempo advantage. That is, in a given poisition it may be possible to checkmate your opponent if you're given four moves with no reply allowed between them. In cases where all replies are ineffective because they come too late, which is often the case, then the advantage does translate to tempo advantage.

Regarding your point about 1. d4 d5 2. c4, white's second move pressurises d5 and makes it harder for black to develop the c8B, so there's a deferred advantage for white in that the tempos are returned somewhere about move nine. Therefore 2.c4 isn't a loss of tempo by white. If 2. ...dc instead, then the loss of tempo translates into central square command, open lines for white on the q side and a really good flexibility in the main lines of the QGA by playing a4 and then developing the Kb1 via d2 rather than via c3.

Anyway, they are just my thoughts. I believe that you are or at least have been a strong player. I think I can tell that, by many of your comments. I also have a lot of experience of playing 1.d4 2. c4.

Most other people will be saying to themselves that it's funny how mega is so completely dense that he doesn't know that repeating a rhetorical question ad infinitum is a sign of his own density, which he then, as a further result of that density, tries to pin on others. They will be wondering why he tries so hard to make himself look even sillier than he is (if that were possible). They will also wonder why everything he says seems intended to make himself look dim and they will wonder why he imagines that other people, cleverer than he is (which most ppl are) will not see that.

1. You confuse weakly solving with a weak solution as well as relying on your big red telephone to tell you the result of the starting position. (And in 5 of the example games I posted there were multiple blunders so after the first blunder the positions were drawn.)

2. Blunder rates in the endgame generally increase with increasing think time. A think time of 37 minutes per move as in the example I posted is hardly blitz. You're welcome to try these at 5 days per move and tell us in a few years, but note the blunder rate at 37 minutes per move was already more than 5 times the blunder rate at 1 second per move.

3. Agreed - but only for small numbers of men. Engines and humans get weaker with increased numbers of men, but humans get weaker much faster.

Fact remains - latest version of SF can't play 5 man chess perfectly.

It's worth emphasizing that the reason it needs to deal with moves (by the opponent of a strategy) that are not optimal is that those moves are not already proven to be suboptimal. They cannot be ignored on the basis of an evaluation which is not only not proven reliable, but proven unreliable.

@13488

"a pawn doesn't win a game by itself" ++ It does: queen it to win. 1 e4 b5? is a white win.

"That is, in a given poisition it may be possible to checkmate your opponent if you're given four moves with no reply allowed between them." ++ Yes, but 3 tempi should be enough to win too, e.g. 1 e4 (1 tempo ahead) Nc6 2 d4 Nb8? 3 Bf4 (3 tempi ahead).

@13493

"They cannot be ignored on the basis of an evaluation which is not only not proven reliable, but proven unreliable."
++ Moves can be ignored based on logic alone. 1 e4 e5 2 Ba6? 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Nd4?, 3 Nxe5? 3 Ng5? 3 Nh4? 3 Ng1 etc. etc.

tygxc where's your proof that 1 tempo isnt enough?

we are still all waiting for it.

"++ Moves can be ignored based on logic alone"

what logic? you still havent provided any. you just assert that a position is losing without any proof.

Ignoring the awful example, the truth is that an extra pawn sometimes wins and sometimes doesn't. There are a vast number of examples of each.

Of course, you can always make up some ad hoc reason for the difference, starting from the conclusion (and if someone pretended the conclusion was different, you would come up with a different contradictory argument, showing their worthlessness).