Chess will never be solved, here's why

Its not 'rumbling'.  Nobody here thinks chess can be solved soon.
People may want to grasp at 'weak' solutions.
The opening poster even suggested chess was 'already solved' by GM's didn't he?  'Weak solving' that is.  
'Solving' chess is what people want it to be.

To understand 'true' solving - got to look at tactics puzzles.
Then one might begin to 'get a handle' on that.  

I would keep clear of tactics puzzles, since you posted one yesterday which I solved in about 15 seconds of looking at it.
tygxc must be Mr Nobody then.
I meant "rumbling" regarding the fact that I don't think anyone understands it as well as they probably would, if they tried to think about it for themselves, starting with the question "How may a solution be arrived at?"

If you don't consider the "how", it's completely empty, which is why I thought the set of definitions was someone's joke, that everyone else is taking seriously. I'm still fairly convinced of that. Some smart-a$$ philosophy, psychology or computing professor has produced that set of algorithm requests as the basis for an essay. Most likely philosophy or psychology. It's been taken seriously.

Perhaps 'somebody' will go all out to spoil the puzzle I'm about to post.
Maybe he'll post the solution move in one second.
He'll miss the point.
And never understand that most people handle their posts better than him.   
This puzzle is partly to address 'dismissal' in chess. 
But he'll miss that probably.  Or he'll worry about the strength of players instead of the qualitative aspect.  Or both.  Likely.

Its white to move and win.
No need for me to put in the solution moves for now.  Or not yet
White has eight options.  Its obvious that the two pawn moves immediately allow a draw by black taking.  
That leaves six King-options.  

After doing a lot of tactics puzzles - people may begin to understand the 'mistake' of 'weak solving'.  

You and I would probably get on better if you were polite enough not to call me somebody. Otherwise, you deserve whatever you get and much more.

Looks like it's a win because black gan get to the corner but I think (pretty sure) that white can get the opposition..

As I expected he quickly posted.
But I don't have to read his post.
Can always wait for other posters.
Apparently one of his tactics is to quickly respond to every post -
with the idea that its 'already responded to' and thereby others won't.
An important tactic for him - because otherwise he might get 'posted around' too much for him. 

But people can make their own comments about the puzzle - and what their take is on the solution move and why that move is dismissed instantly by many.  While the 'intuitive' move is often blundered into.
And make other posts in general.

And then there's the connection of that with openings and ECO codes and 'tabiya' positions and why its a mistake to 'dismiss' moves and to dismiss positions.
You can't do so and have 'true' solving.
Unless you want to define 'false' as 'true'. 

My way of solving it was to remember the solution. The only way I was going to get it except good fortune. Hard enough to justify it in hindsight.

If I understand you well, if we use a very selective engine for B and it wins against all possible moves by W, the game is weakly solved according to the definition, but if it loses, the game is not solved because we have not tested W against all possible moves by B; we should be lucky. So yes, the problem is that we don't know the value of the game nor the strategy, thus we have to determine them basically through an exhaustive brute-force search, as @Elorch and @btickler say. This can cut down some lines thanks to the evaluation function (like in the previous example of won position), but yes, still demanding. Is that what you mean by semi-strong? To give a strong solution instead means to give a strategy even for position that could arise from blunders by the players.  

Are you aware that you're completely mad? I'm just wondering whether it's with insight or without.

I mean, you are a complete barm cake. A nut job. Just look at that post. Stream of consciousness but unhealthily paranoid too. You'd do better NOT to post your thoughts about others, if they're negative. Could get you into trouble.

Unfortunately already published. Appears as position 70 in Averbakh's Comprehensive Chess Endings; Pawn Endings, Pergamon press version. Taken from Tattersall's A Thousand End-Games, 1910, but apparently came from an actual game and the winning line was pointed out by one Dr. Cassidy 1884. Also used as the final stage of various endgame studies by Moravec, Horwitz and possibly others.

Only read a couple of words there.  He's already back to namecalling while continuing with his other inferior pathetic postings.
And another poster caught him in falsehoods recently.

So now - time to respond to Elroch's good and honest post.

Yes, your reading comprehension isn't very good, is it. I'm reporting you if it continues. Although you aren't well, it's still an attempt by you to dominate threads and people and to prevent open discussion.

If you call me or anyone "he" or "somebody" or anything approximating that, you'll be reported any and every time it happens. OK?

An honest post !  And a good one.
And we could talk about things we agree on.  Not always best but it can be useful sometimes.
We both agreed there are ten types of squares on the board.
And that they can be defined by the lengths of their diagonals.  We both did so.
Every square on the board has two diagonals.
Even the corner squares !  (although in the case of the corners - the shorter diagonal is only one square long !)
Very neat.  This ties in with very strong players being able to play blindfold - instantly they can know what the diagonal potentials are for queens and bishops on All squares!
Plus - mental visualization has to be going on anyway all the time - for good play.

We also seem to agree that chess won't be 'solved' in our lifetimes.
So that's two.  There would be a 'big list' ... lol.
But then - you (@Elroch) asked me where I got the info that the 7 piece tablebases are compromised by skipping castling and en passant factors.
Did you see the confirmation of that in Wikipedia ?  (one of my favorite websites)

Not quite. There is no need for an exhaustive, brute force search, because that's a fully strong solution. It is necessary to develop algorithms that cut down the necessary search quite drastically and also assess positions accurately.

It makes more sense to stop thinking in terms of weak solutions being only for one colour or the other and I made no stipulation about selectivity. The idea is to attempt to find the strongest lines for both sides. If you don't find the strongest lines for one side, you've no need to do it for the other and so it isn't a solution at all. I've already explained that it's necessary to cut out blunders but to count in surprising moves. Sometimes they are hard to tell apart.

In general, it should be accepted that all this stuff about weak solutions is nonsense which is distracting people who don't understand the processes of finding solutions for themselves. And this idea of "what" is significant but "how" is not the issue is mumbo-jumbo. Personally, I'd be happier if all the so-called theory were dropped and there was an honest attempt to work it out as it should be. I was a decent enough computer programmer in my time and I'm sure there are those here who have more expertise than I did. Just use the principles you know about and see how you go. Because all this stuff about solving it from one perspective is also nonsense.

Folks - suggestion:  don't be deterred from posting by 'intimidation tactics'
nor by angry tirades ... (he wants double standards too - anything to provoke)

And now - 
In the puzzle in post # 1509  most people pick the 'intuitive move' and get it wrong and only draw.   Kc3 doesn't work.  Its a blunder.  

This is an aspect of chess I call 'misdirection'.
Yes - chess pieces have that power.  To 'misdirect'.
To properly go at a position like that - one can discard 'doctrine' and go at 'objectivity' instead.   
'Doctrine' says 'Calculate Calculate !  Do your calculations !'  and 'Learn Pattern Recognition'. 
Neither one of those is going to do the job properly in the puzzle in post #1509.  
They fail.  And premature calculations and also 'theme assignment' so often cause more negatives and inefficiency.

To do it right - Observations are necessary.  Distinct from Calculations.
Good observations lead to good tactics detections and motifs detection.
See 'what's going on in the position' before trying to isolate and compare sequences of moves.
Although insufficient calculation is one of the classic errors - insufficient observation and  non-existent observation (yes - no observation phase at all - it happens)  are even bigger ones ! 

Yes.  I know.  I got it from the tactics puzzles on the site.
No 'unfortunately'.  I'm not looking for credit for the puzzle.

But it is fortunate that you posted !
Haven't seen a post from you for a while !
So posting that one worked for that too.
My main point was/is about 'dismissal' of moves though.
The very Weird looking solution move in post #1507 (I didn't post the solution yet) is all about observation.

Its not so weird if one spots that black has a tactic.
But even there - looks kind of 'counterintuitive'.
Point:  dismissing moves according to 'tabiya' or as 'inferior to main line moves'.  There's mainly only one person appearing to do that - but in a civil way.  Unlike the other guy.  
I would say 'chess could be solved in five years if the money is right' has helped the forum more than hurt it.   However intensely invalid it is ! 

Let's stop the name calling again please 😁, let's be the adults here and discuss the topic of solving chess. Opinions are there for everyone whether you agree or not. Let's keep it on topic again. Thanks all 👍😁

#1487

"knocking 10^44 down to 10^17"
++ Can we please agree that the 10^44 is too high? Tromp exactly counted the number of possible chess positions. Then he randomly sampled 10000 of these. He found 543 of these legal. Thus he arrived at 10^44 legal positions. However all of his 543 randomly sampled  positions found legal contain multiple excess underpromotions. Such positions can never occur in a reasonable game with reasonable moves and hence not in an ideal game with optimal moves. I gave a proof game for one of his randomly sampled positions. An ideal game with optimal moves would have an accuracy close to 100% and an average centipawn loss close to 0. The proof game for the randomly sampled position has an accuracy near 0% and an average centipawn loss close to 500. So none of the 543 positions play any role in weakly solving chess and the 10^44 is too high.

"Relying on Stockfish for perfect evaluations to bridge to the actually perfect evaluations of tablebases"
++ No, I do not rely on Stockfish for perfect evaluations.  I rely on the 7-men endgame table base for perfect evaluations draw / win / loss. I use Stockfish only to generate the candidate ideal game i.e. to guide the search towards the 7-men endgame table base. The proof that all black moves are optimal comes retroactively from the 7-men endgame table base giving a draw. The proof that all white moves are optimal comes from exhaustively investigating all reasonable white move alternatives.

"Removing all promotions"
++ The Gourion count 10^37 excludes all excess promotions, i.e. all promotions to a piece not yet captured or i.e. all promotions needing to borrow the promoted piece from another box of 32 chess men, not all promotions. I agree that some positions with e.g. 4 queens do occur in reasonable games with reasonable moves and thus can occur in an ideal game with optimal moves. Thus in that respect the Gourion count is too low. Thus the number of legal and sensible positions would lie between 10^44 (Tromp) and 10^37 (Gourion).

"Casting aside dozens of orders of magnitude for "nonsensical" positions (also an assumption) based on sampling a small set set of positions"
++ Tromp randomly sampled 10,000 positions without excess promotions. I presented 4 above. Inspection shows that these positions are not reasonable: cannot be reached by a reasonable game with reasonable moves and thus cannot occur in an ideal game with optimal moves. Tromp conjectured that only 1 in 10^6 legal positions without excess promotions is sensible: can occur in a reasonable game with reasonable moves.

"that limits your reduction to 6 orders of magnitude"
++ That is right: if Tromp's conjecture on 10^6 is right, then the figure of legal and sensible positions would not lie between 10^37 and 10^44, but between 10^31 and 10^38. We do not know if Tromp's conjecture is right. We do not have the number of legal and sensible positions with reasonable excess promotions. It should lie between 10^31 and 10^38, I assume 10^36 to stay at the safe side.

"Assuming Sveshnikov knew anything about solving chess vs. just analyzing openings when there's no demonstration that his statement is anything more than an offhand boast at a dinner party."
++ Sveshnikov knew something about chess. Unlike all here he was a grandmaster. Even if he had not become a grandmaster in 1977, he would have become a grandmaster in 2017 by becoming 65+ Senior World Champion. Sveshnikov was ridiculed for his statements that the Sveshnikov Variation (oh no, the hole at d5), the French Advance (oh no, white loses a tempo), the Alapin Variation (oh no, white gets an isolated queen's pawn) were correct. He was vindicated by Carlsen playing the Sveshnikov at his World Championship Match with Caruana. Maybe it was an offhand boast at a dinner party. Maybe it was a profound prophesy based on years of chess analysis without and with engines.
Sveshnikov claimed he could in 5 years with modern computers and good assistants analyse from the opening to the 7-men endgame table base. So his claim is about analysing openings. That is what he did for a job. Unlike all here he was a recognised world top expert at analysing openings.

"If Tygxc had the money and achieved his 5 year analysis goal, he would be able to produce an engine that plays exceptionally well, perhaps...but it would not be a solution for chess at all."
++ No, I would not produce any engine, I would use an engine that exists to analyse from the opening to the 7-men endgame table base. It would be a weak solution for chess as it would produce an ideal game with proof that all moves are optimal.

"You can weakly solve chess with brute force even without any further pruning" ++ I agree.

"just not within our lifetimes by any foreseeable technology."
++ I respectfully disagree. It depends on the speed of the engine and on the number of positions needing to visit.
Cloud engines have reached 10^9 nodes / second, that is 1000 times faster than a desktop.
The number of legal and sensible positions lies as said above between 10^31 and 10^38 I assume 10^36. That would be the number of positions needed to visit for strongly solving chess i.e. a 32-men table base. The time and the storage are prohibitive.
Weakly solving chess requires to visit less positions than strongly solving chess. Each pawn move and each capture make huge numbers of positions unreachable and thus irrelevant. How many positions are relevant? We do not know until it is done. We may have a better estimate after one opening say C67 is analysed, that would take about 3 months of cloud engine time.
Checkers was solved using the square root of the number of legal and sensible positions. Checkers is no chess, but is a draw as well as chess is conjectured to be.
Losing Chess was solved using the 4th root of the number of legal and sensible positions.  Losing Chess is no chess, but it is close in its rules.
It is thus plausible to assume that for chess it is about the square root too. That leaves 10^18 relevant positions i.e. 10^9 seconds for the whole of chess i.e. all 500 ECO codes.

To weakly solve chess it is not necessary to look at all ECO codes.
If 1 e4 e5 draws, then it is not necessary to establish if 1 e4 c5 draws as well or not.
Instead of 200 ECO codes B00 to C99 only 19 of these are enough.
That is another reduction by a factor 10 i.e. 10^17 positions or 10^8 seconds for the relevant ECO codes.

Concentrating on multiple, excess underpromotions is a flea-bite in the percentage of riduculous position that are legal. Possibly only approximately zero positions out of every 10,000 are both legal and non-ridiculous, meaning that they are legal and relevant; not containing random moves and gross blunders. Approx. zero out of 10,000 still would lead to a very high number of relevant positions overall. So the first part of your argument is correct.

However, you do fall into error very soon. <<<++ No, I do not rely on Stockfish for perfect evaluations.  I rely on the 7-men endgame table base for perfect evaluations draw / win / loss. I use Stockfish only to generate the candidate ideal game i.e. to guide the search towards the 7-men endgame table base.>>>

SF or another engine can only "guide the search" if its evaluations are perfect, so you are relying on it for perfect evaluations. There's no escape from that. There's no argument you can effectively make, to the contary, where an algorithm is the only thing between a guided solution and a so-called strong solution. A strong solution is meaningless in competitive chess terms and so each game has to be assessed and SF is not up to the task. There's no question about that. It is not debateable and you should accept it. Otherwise you cannot guarantee an accurate solution, which this us all about.

I wish some of the others were capable of arguing coherently and decisively and yet any argument is only as good as the readers' perceptions of it. No-one can be forced into understanding, if indeed they are capable.

<<To weakly solve chess it is not necessary to look at all ECO codes. If 1 e4 e5 draws, then it is not necessary to establish if 1 e4 c5 draws as well or not.>>

Yes, that's obviously correct if the only form of the idea of a "weak solution" is to determine if black can actually draw. But as Elroch correctly asked, what if 1. e4 ...a5 wins for black? I think the idea is ridiculous and so do you but what if it does? Or, differently, what if the object of a weak solution is to determine whether white can win against any possible reply by black to 1. e4? Then, all black first moves are relevant. The point is that artificially constraning the weak solution to one drawing reply by black isn't sufficient. It's exactly equivalent to solving a chess puzzle and claiming that chess is solved.

Isn't it?