Chess will never be solved, here's why

"With a weak solution two totally independent solutions may match nowhere at all, even if they're both correct, so verification would be a major problem."

Which would happen to some extent anyway - with weak solutions.
Since strong solutions are only widely available up to 7 pieces onboard -
and it seems to be much agreed in the forum that chess isn't going to be 'strongly solved' in the foreseeable future - if ever - 
the forum has been mostly about 'weak solutions'.

Candidate general definition of 'weak solution':
Any solution that isn't a strong one.
But that leaves a lot of range.   
And many differing possible definitions of particular 'weak solutions'.
Different parties will want their 'weak solution' and its particular definition.
And to push it.  As we've been seeing here. 

They Definitely have something in common.  Intensely.
'Better than all of you' coming from each of them.
(while so far from the case)
From one of them - the 'better than' is asserted periodically.
But from the other - an intense instance of Explicitly.
"I am pretty sure I know more about mathematics than any of you, including the man with the 2 degrees."
Immortal.  Definitive.  The Keeper.  From page 108 here.  Currently post #2150.  Could be framed and Enshrined.  Including without the '2 degrees part.'  Has far-reaching implications.
Others have been pointing out his crass mistakes -
but he just keeps repeating them ...
revealing not just ineptitude - but Deficiency.

He would appear to be much younger than the 'other' though.
Is it tragic in a way ?  There's a word ...  'pathos' I think it is.
Another word is 'poignant'.
Young.  So much time ahead of him.  
How could he have possibly got this way ?
The answer might lie in the effects of the internet.
And how some of those born into it might be extra vulnerable.

Ironic and Hilarious that the other one attacks him?  
Some kind of jealousy perhaps.  
Regarding the right to talk back to such persons -
we're to have a "The Emperor has no clothes" situation ?
I don't think so. 
Fortunately - the website doesn't seem to be run that way.

Relationship of 'can be proven' to 'has been proven'
looks solid.
With 'has not been proven' also factored.
Chess has not been solved.
So there is no proof that it can be.

Is that the same as 'could be' ?  No.
The number of possible chess positions is finite.
So its argued that chess could be solved.  Hypothetically.
But 'can be' is different.  Because its also not proven that there will be the resources and the needed time to get that job done.
Like - millions of years of time!  Or trillions of years.

There's a much simpler explanation for what you are rationalizing here.

#2245
"I don't see how there's any notion of a clique between people that don't interact outside of public thread posts, really. That would imply a pre-existing relationship, but the common focal points for this theoretical clique historically would seem to be Tygxc and yourself, or more accurately, the ummm...steadfast and closely-held ideas you both post month in and month out."

MARatingen  860
Btickler        1559
Haiaku         1667
Playerafar    1709
Elroch          1779
Optimissed  1890
Tygxc           2044

What could that relationship be?

#2249
"He would appear to be much younger than the 'other' though."
Thank you for this compliment. You made my day.

I guess you forgot that Pfren, BlueEmu, and Llama...all of whom are rated significantly higher than you, also refuted your premise here and on other threads, so that "relationship" is not valid.  See...this is why you can't seem to get where you want to go...selective myopia.

You are also using rapid ratings of human beings, and pretending they should have some meaningful impact on understanding how chess can be solved by engines or some future technology.  They do not.  There's a reason that AlphaZero, Deep Blue, etc. were created by developers who also happened to play chess, and not by GMs who happen to know how to write software.  One set of skills is far more useful than the other in this arena.  Your rating gives you not one ounce more credibility than you have ever had here, which is not much.  Much the same way that you don't ask your horse how to win the Kentucky Derby. 

wow

#2214

"Thus your sample involves uncertain conclusions based on a sample comprising about 1 of each 10^36 positions. It is virtually worthless for drawing conclusions."
++ That is right: I try to draw conclusions about 10^36 legal and sensible positions from a sample games data base of 10^7, i.e. 10^8 positions. However, the mathematician Tromp is allowed to draw conclusions about the legality of 10^44 positions from a sample of 538 legal positions.

"and the vast majority of these cannot be reached in a reasonable game with > 50% accuracy.
You know you are guessing wildly. So do we all."
++ It is an educated guess. Pick any one of the 538 legal Tromp positions and try to construct a game of > 50% accuracy that reaches it. You are sure to fail. I gave one example of a Tromp legal position and its shortest proof game above. Even more: Pick any of the 10,000 positions without any promotions that Tromp randomly sampled and try to construct a game of > 50% accuracy that reaches it. You are sure to fail again. I gave one example of such a position and somebody else was so kind to provide a proof game. Its accuracy is near 0%. Tromp himself conjectured that 1 in 10^6 positions without promotions to pieces not previously captured may be sensible. Multiplying the number of positions without promotions to pieces not previously captured by 10, to account for positions with 3 or 4 queens leaves 10^38 positions. The conjecture about 1 in 10^6 positions then gives a range of 10^38 - 10^32 legal positions that can occur in a game with > 50% accuracy.

"Some of ICCF or even human games may already be ideal games with optimal moves.
So what? Why would you even think this is relevant?"
++ This is relevant, because it means some heuristics derived from human play, ICCF play and TCEC play may be used to simplify solving chess.

Whenever a pawn promotes, it is to a queen, unless it must be a knight to promote with check or to deliver a smothered checkmate, or unless it must be a rook or even a bishop to prevent stalemate. That is something we know. The solution to solving chess is not suddenly going to include 9 underpromotions.

The center is more important than the wings. It is something we know. That is why if 1 e4 and 1 d4 are proven draws, then it is not necessary to check 1 a4. It could be done on demand, but there is no point in wasting resources on it as the outcome is beyond any doubt.

Losing a pawn or an exchange without clear compensation usually leads to a loss. Losing a piece even more. That is something we know. Thus it is pointless to investigate 1 e4 e5 2 Ba6. We know it loses for white.

#2255
"I guess you forgot that Pfren, BlueEmu, and Llama...all of whom are rated significantly higher than you"
++ Please kindly remind me what Pfren, BlueEmu, and Llama wrote on this thread here.
I have trouble finding any of their statements in the 2258 posts. Maybe you can help me.
Pfren, BlueEmu, and Llama are different persons from me, so it is only logical that they have sometimes different opinions than me on some topics and sometimes the same. The whole point of a discussion forum is to confront different opinions.

Tromp waved you off when you tried to push your BS...10^44 dropped to 10^36 dropped to 10^17...and I am guessing he did so for the same reason we are.  It doesn't matter if only 1 in a million positions turns out to be viable/worth evaluating...because you have to evaluate them anyway at some level to make that determination which will take longer than any of our lifetimes.  You just keep pretending this will magically happen with no effort whatsoever.

I'm not going to search it all...but Llamas posts were fairly recent, so I'm pretty sure you can find them.  Are you planning to claim that these posters do *not* disagree with your numbers?  Because most of the regulars on these type of threads here know that they did/do.  The point is, you reduced the set of posters down in a dubious fashion that only serves your interests...which is *exactly* what you did to come up with your 5 year plan .

Oh, that's the point? Nice that you didn't write the names in reverse order. I wonder what is Schaeffer's rating in checkers, though...

And to distinguish proofs from hypotheses, whenever possible. But of course it is proven that intelligence, education and logical thinking skills are proportional to chess rating, isn't it? So none here can be better than you at that...

#2259
"Tromp waved you off when you tried to push your BS...10^44 dropped to 10^36"
++ No, Tromp could not agree with any of my proposed definitions of a sensible position.
My present best effort: sensible position = legal position with a proof game of > 50% accuracy.
Tromp was quite helpful generating the random sample of 10,000 positions without promotions to pieces not previously captured. Tromp conjectured that only 1 in 10^6 of those positions without promotions to pieces not previously captured might occur in a reasonable game.

"It doesn't matter if only 1 in a million positions turns out to be viable/worth evaluating...because you have to evaluate them anyway at some level to make that determination"
++ No, I do not have to evaluate them, as they do not occur during weakly solving chess.
Only positions that are legal, sensible, reachable, and relevant need evaluating as they turn up during weakly solving chess.
Illegal positions do not turn up as they cannot be reached from the initial position.
Non-sensible positions like with 2 white dark square bishops or 5 black rooks do not turn up as they cannot be reached from the initial position by a game with > 50% accuracy and we are searching for an ideal game with optimal moves and thus an accuracy near 100%.
Non-reachable positions do not turn up. Many positions with a white pawn on e2 are legal and sensible, but none can be reached after 1 e4.
Non-relevant positions are legal, sensible, and reachable, but do not matter. If 1 e4 e5 is proven a draw, then it is not relevant if 1 e4 c5 draws as well or not.

#2255
"You are also using rapid ratings of human beings, and pretending they should have some meaningful impact on understanding how chess can be solved by engines or some future technology."
++ I did not pretend or even imply that, that is your interpretation. Maybe the ratings have some meaningful impact on how humans behave on the forum. How much ad hominem arguments they use. How much sarcasm. How much ridicule. How much they gang up.
Just an example: "Your rating gives you not one ounce more credibility than you have ever had here, which is not much."
In your own style: "Your low rating gives you not one ounce more credibility than you have ever had here, which is not much."

#2261
"And to distinguish proofs from hypotheses, whenever possible." ++ Yes, that is all right.

"But of course it is proven that intelligence, education and logical thinking skills are proportional to chess rating, isn't it?"
++ I did not write or even imply that.
This forum is open to all. Rating, university degrees, age do not matter.
Btickler mentioned a relationship between certain people. I hinted at a possible relationship.

Interesting.

There are many ways to offend. Mixing up proofs and personal hypotheses as if they were the same thing, for example, can be viewed as a form of manipulation; citing a paper to support one's claim, when the paper in fact does not, is another. @tygxc, e.g., repeated dozens times a wrong citation about the number of nodes searched to solve checkers, but only after 7(!) requests to pinpoint it in the paper, he (or she idk) conceded it was wrong. If he understands as he says, it's not possible he didn't understand that point, and in fact I think he understood perfectly; but that's only worse than not understanding.

As for understanding each other, I don't think we cannot understand you two because of a lack of intelligence or education, and there is no conspiracy or a "gang" against you. It's because your definitions and the relationships between them are not clear at all, compared to those one can find in textbooks and papers, and that one knows s/he understand well from discussion with peers, grades, exercises, etc.

As for the relationship between ratings and the capability to understand the topic, imho there is basically none. I hope you don't want to suggest that the higher the rating, the more intelligent the person. One can think that there is a relationship only if s/he thinks that her supposedly better evaluation function (yes, humans use an evaluation function too, but the rating does not depend only on that) can be used to understand how to reduce the search space, in order to weakly solve chess. I reject this hypothesis entirely, because evaluation functions are based on inductions from a limited number of situations and therefore can be affected by faulty generalization. A single "black swan" can subvert an expected score and that's why basically nobody proposes to cut down branches from the search space as @tygxc proposes to do. As for this point:

In fact, they mention it all the time. They call it "broad search", for example, and they clearly distinguish it from the weak solution.

So you've reached the 7 man tablebase in this drawn position.

And you've done all the takebacks up to the first position and find they're still drawn.

What's SF14 going to suggest as your first alternative move from the first position? (You can look it up if you like.)

(As an aside - strictly irrelevant - any progress on my challenge to prove just a single one of Tromp's samples can't be reached by play with an accuracy > 50%?)

#2267

"There are many ways to offend." ++ Sure there are. Like you did.

"citing a paper to support one's claim, when the paper in fact does not, is another."
++ There were two different papers by Schaeffer about solving checkers. One mentioned 10^9 nodes, the other 10^7 nodes each needing 10^7 positions. Hence the confusion.

"I don't think we cannot understand you because of a lack of intelligence or education"
++ It is about ability or will to understand. I do not care about intelligence or education. I try to explain in a way that is understandable to all. I answer all questions to the best of my ability.

"there is no conspiracy or a "gang" against you"
++ Most of my arguments get just met by some insults, some ridicule, some sarcasm, some unsound counterargument, plain denial, some trolling. That then gets applauded by another one. I have no problem at all with different opinions, as long as it stays civil and constructive.

"It's because your definitions and the relationships between them are not clear at all"
++ I try to define as clearly as possible. I try to indicate the relationships as clearly as I can. I am aware that my reasoning may sometimes be too succinct for some to understand, but I do not want to make my posts too long either.

"As for the relationship between ratings and the topic, imho there is basically none."
++ Basically little. A little bit maybe: there is or rather was a relationship between chess playing strength and education in science. Anderssen, Steinitz, Lasker, Euwe were mathematicians. Capablanca, Botvinnik, Vidmar were engineers. That however is not what I implied. Rather like: we cannot beat this guy in chess and neither in science, but surely we are better at insulting, ridiculising...

"their supposedly better evaluation function"
++ I do not believe in an evaluation function to solve chess, only in deep calculation and using heuristics derived from human and engine play. The evaluation function will always fall short. Only deep calculation until the endgame table base or an earlier 3-fold repetition of position is reliable.