I need a math genius to explain how many Chess positions there are.

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Avatar of DoYouLikeCurry
More than there are atoms in the universe
Avatar of Ziryab
DoYouLikeCurry wrote:
More than there are atoms in the universe

Possible games, yes. Positions, no.

There is a difference.

Avatar of Chezzyxs
.
Avatar of CheckmateCheck1234
:(
Avatar of RakeshMahanti

Not simple due to the fact that you have to take in complexities of each move, checkmates, and checks into account. There are probably over a 100 trillion possible combinations.

Avatar of DreamscapeHorizons

Alrighty, there are only 2 chess positions..... winning ones and drawn ones. U might think there r 3 & that I forgot to add it but it's part of the winning position. I hope this helps.

Avatar of Kyobir

It's 10¹²⁰

Avatar of RakeshMahanti

Shannons number

Avatar of Ziryab
Kyobir wrote:

It's 10¹²⁰

Move sequences, not positions.

Avatar of Lotus960

The only number in chess greater than the number of possible positions is the number of excuses players make when they lose. Truly, this number is so enormous that even the best mathematicians have not yet managed to calculate it. 😎

Avatar of CraigIreland

The hard part is eliminating all the unreachable positions. The rest is trivial. You set upper and lower bounds by defining known reachable and known unreachable positions. With effort you could refine those bounds until you got bored. Without having proven it, I'd say that the computational complexity of finding an exact number is the same as that for solving Chess.

Avatar of chessnoob1230000000000000

Тнеге аге а lот оf тнем. Gгеатег тнаи (ог еqцаl) то 1.

Avatar of Spr_chess_intermediate
Eniamar a écrit :

There's a better page on wikipedia that explains it a bit better, however:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess#Mathematics_and_computers

So between 10^43 and 10^50 positions, given that nobody else is smart enough to figure out how to account for all the special cases and arrive at an exact number.

It's actually not about intelligence, it's just not within our capacity to find a more accurate value...

Avatar of CraigIreland
Spr_chess_intermediate wrote:
Eniamar a écrit :

There's a better page on wikipedia that explains it a bit better, however:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess#Mathematics_and_computers

So between 10^43 and 10^50 positions, given that nobody else is smart enough to figure out how to account for all the special cases and arrive at an exact number.

It's actually not about intelligence, it's just not within our capacity to find a more accurate value...

I'm convinced that with funding for a few years of research, those numbers could be refined but it would be a soul destroying task because there would be nothing meaningful to come from it. When numbers are that large we content ourselves with high degrees of inaccuracy.

Avatar of tygxc

Tromp counted exactly 8726713169886222032347729969256422370854716254 positions, of which 4.82 * 10^44 are legal, of which the vast majority is not sensible as the 3 samples show.
https://github.com/tromp/ChessPositionRanking 
A better estimate is Gourion's 3*10^37 without promotions to pieces not previously captured.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.09386.pdf

Avatar of Ziryab

@thgxc Good content. Thanks.

Avatar of Kyobir

At least 7.

Avatar of putshort
But it has to be a playable position you can’t say rook takes pawn with no compensation is a possible position because it would never be played. How would they estimate that number?
Avatar of StOcK_fIsH_MiTtEnS

It is estimated there are between 10111 and 10123 positions (including illegal moves) in Chess. (If you rule out illegal moves that number drops dramatically to 1040 moves. Which is still a lot!). "There are even more possible variations of chess games than there are atoms in the observable universe." Thank you google

Avatar of Bogopawn657

Enough to circle the planet earth several times over!!!