I have just found the most wonderful solution to chess, but the proof is too long for this space.
Is Chess on the verge of being solved?
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nameno1had wrote:
cuneglas wrote:
Estragon wrote:
Eventually chess will be "solved" in all variations, but it won't be one clear path to the solution. You would have to memorize all the computer analysis, which would be several times more difficult than memorizing all the GM games since 1970, but if you only truly knew and understood the latter you should be able to play at IM level at least.
So the "solution" won't kill human-vs-human OTB play, if and when it is found.
Solving chess will spell the end for chess engine competitions. If a 32-piece tablebase is easily accessible, then solving chess will render internet chess unplayable (cheating would be rife with no effective way of proving it). However, it will not have a great impact on human v human OTB chess at the club level at least. Players will continue to play the same openings they have always played, follow the same strategy they have always followed. I doubt chess at the professional level will continue as it does now, and would have to adapt somehow. I mean, when big prize money and funding is concerned, who is going to stump up the cash for a board game that has been solved, the solution being out there? Of course, it would be impossible for a human to memorize such a complex solution, however, the stigma of dedicating your life to a solved game will tarnish chess at the professional level.
On a final note, analysing your games will become quite a dull affair, as you consult your 32-piece tablebase you will remark, "damn, I missed a chance to force mate in 86 moves, giving my opponent the chance to force stalemate in 180 moves..."
Not to try riding a dead horse or to tick off the mods, but isn't this already happening, not just here, but on all chess game websites?
nameno1had wrote,
Funny, I've played FPS vids for a few decades now and it was clear that occasionally some moron was getting off on cheating with the help of mods. It never even occured to me that my online opponent could be using a cheat program to play.
Now that you mention it, it seems very naive of me not to have at least contemplated this possibilty. Maybe it's because I hold chess, and subsequently chess players, in some idealized (albeit clearly self-delusional) esteem.
Would you happen to know the names of any of said cheat mods/programs? Also, would you, or onyone else know how to spot a cheater? Any tell-tale tells or quirks that might tip me off or give them up. I love playing computer programs, so I guess ultimately it doesn't really matter. I suppose I'd only care a little if I decide to start caring about my online rating.
Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to help me out with this.
Cheers
automatonomo wrote:
nameno1had wrote:
cuneglas wrote:
Estragon wrote:
Eventually chess will be "solved" in all variations, but it won't be one clear path to the solution. You would have to memorize all the computer analysis, which would be several times more difficult than memorizing all the GM games since 1970, but if you only truly knew and understood the latter you should be able to play at IM level at least.
So the "solution" won't kill human-vs-human OTB play, if and when it is found.
Solving chess will spell the end for chess engine competitions. If a 32-piece tablebase is easily accessible, then solving chess will render internet chess unplayable (cheating would be rife with no effective way of proving it). However, it will not have a great impact on human v human OTB chess at the club level at least. Players will continue to play the same openings they have always played, follow the same strategy they have always followed. I doubt chess at the professional level will continue as it does now, and would have to adapt somehow. I mean, when big prize money and funding is concerned, who is going to stump up the cash for a board game that has been solved, the solution being out there? Of course, it would be impossible for a human to memorize such a complex solution, however, the stigma of dedicating your life to a solved game will tarnish chess at the professional level.
On a final note, analysing your games will become quite a dull affair, as you consult your 32-piece tablebase you will remark, "damn, I missed a chance to force mate in 86 moves, giving my opponent the chance to force stalemate in 180 moves..."
Not to try riding a dead horse or to tick off the mods, but isn't this already happening, not just here, but on all chess game websites?
nameno1had wrote,
Funny, I've played FPS vids for a few decades now and it was clear that occasionally some moron was getting off on cheating with the help of mods. It never even occured to me that my online opponent could be using a cheat program to play.
Now that you mention it, it seems very naive of me not to have at least contemplated this possibilty. Maybe it's because I hold chess, and subsequently chess players, in some idealized (albeit clearly self-delusional) esteem.
Would you happen to know the names of any of said cheat mods/programs? Also, would you, or onyone else know how to spot a cheater? Any tell-tale tells or quirks that might tip me off or give them up. I love playing computer programs, so I guess ultimately it doesn't really matter. I suppose I'd only care a little if I decide to start caring about my online rating.
Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to help me out with this.
Cheers
With all due respect, I have been warned about discussing this subject in open forum. All I know is there is a list of those either caught or suspected. Chess.com monitors the top players especially for patterns that would suggest they use an engine to play their games. If you want to discuss this further, I think it would behoove us to do it privately via email. I am willing to tell you what else I have seen, so that you can try to protect yourself. So I encourage you to email me.
Jan 25, 2012
0
#105
nameno1had wrote:
I think you will also need something I have been wondering about, that is, if it was developed during the cold war. Imagine for a moment( if you understand FM modulation) being able to know what your opponent thinks before he confirms it. If you had something that could receive and decypher brain waves and then couple it with the mind controlled brain inplant you spoke of. This would be the best way to stymie their attack, but what happens if they have the same equipment. You are then forced to think one thing and at last second make a random move, which will turn it into a slowed down form of blitz chess. So anyone who loves this game and is really intelligent enough to not only be that good at it, but also to see what I am ,will realize the futility in trying to gain an unfair advantage of that magnitude, it eventually will make the game, a waste of time.
They are actually working on a machine that can draw pictures of the image in your mind's eye. Using such a device, you might one day be able to watch your opponent analyze variations. Unfortunately your opponent will probably notice the fact that you're wiring up electrodes all over his skull...
This is all a bit silly, and all theoretical...
You can't practically solve chess, the search space is just too vast.
I think I read you would need to create like a million more universes and store 1 move in each atom, and thats not very likely to happen.
I think table bases will get bigger and bigger, but the growth is exponential or maybe stronger, similar to n!
no
We can actually estimate when chess will be practically solved. We know that a modern computer can see a forced mate in x in a short time y (this is a perfect play by a computer). How many of these kind of mate in x positions are there in total? Then we could look at what computers could do 10, 20, 30 years ago, and extrapolate into the future 10, 20, 30 years. Of course this is not all encompassing, and should include forced draws also, but could give us a hint at when computers can play perfectly in every possible position on the board. :)
Perhaps this needs a bit of left-field thinking. Could there be a different way of 'solving' chess other than brute-force calculating every possible move in every possible position? Like some rule or formula that can be followed which prevents the player from ever getting into a lost position?
(I doubt this somehow, I'm just trying to stimulate a stale discussion 
)
Mar 22, 2012
0
#110
Chess is infinite: There are 400 different positions after each player makes one move apiece. There are 72,084 positions after two moves apiece. There are 9+ million positions after three moves apiece. There are 288+ billion different possible positions after four moves apiece. There are more 40-move games on Level-1 than the number of electrons in our universe. There are more game-trees of Chess than the number of galaxies (100+ billion), and more openings, defences, gambits, etc. than the number of quarks in our universe! --Chesmayne
SOURCE:
http://www.chess-poster.com/english/notes_and_facts/did_you_know.htm
PS: I DIDN'T "do the math" here to verify or refute the above stmt
PPS: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4165/are-there-more-40-moves-chess-games-than-atoms-in-the-universe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_number
The only working means so far of solviong chess is strategy, and I believe this won't change soon.
Btw, here's an interview with Garry Kasparov. Among other things, the part between 49:08 and 51:15 minutes includes his opinion about solving chess.
Mar 22, 2012
0
#112
madhacker wrote:
Perhaps this needs a bit of left-field thinking. Could there be a different way of 'solving' chess other than brute-force calculating every possible move in every possible position? Like some rule or formula that can be followed which prevents the player from ever getting into a lost position?
(I doubt this somehow, I'm just trying to stimulate a stale discussion )
Likely not a simple rule, but a few hundred that computers comprehend. Computers could not beat GMs until they could employ positional concepts. Brute-force calculations are not enough.
We need to revise and clarify our notions of "solving". Even so, it is a long ways from easily beating all carbon life forms at the game (where we are now) to knowing whether White's initial move confers a decisive advantage (a possible definition of solving).
As computing advances, data storage must become more effecient as well. In less that twenty years we've gone from measuring PC capabilities in kilobytes to measuring them in terabytes. What will the next twenty years bring?
its a very interesting topic, but I don't think it would matter much to players. People don't always make the perfect move and people enjoy playing for the sake of playing, so between two humans it would matter little if some computer had been able to 'solve' chess.
Even if a computer one day existed that was able to literally solve any given game/position so that it was simply unbeatable by any other player, people would still play. Some would even enjoy playing against that computer, just to see if they could match it and end with a draw.
I still get beaten by Computer3-HARD on here, I dont need to wait for such advances to feel inferior!
NimzoRoy wrote:
Chess is infinite: There are 400 different positions after each player makes one move apiece. There are 72,084 positions after two moves apiece. There are 9+ million positions after three moves apiece. There are 288+ billion different possible positions after four moves apiece. There are more 40-move games on Level-1 than the number of electrons in our universe. There are more game-trees of Chess than the number of galaxies (100+ billion), and more openings, defences, gambits, etc. than the number of quarks in our universe! --Chesmayne
SOURCE:
http://www.chess-poster.com/english/notes_and_facts/did_you_know.htm
PS: I DIDN'T "do the math" here to verify or refute the above stmt
PPS: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4165/are-there-more-40-moves-chess-games-than-atoms-in-the-universe
There are about 10^60 legal positions (I read that our planet has that amount of atoms, so far aways from the whole universe). Positions are what matter, not all possible games that are in amount of like 10^1000 (longest possible game is thousands of moves). Lots of those 10^60 legal positions are trivial, Like a lone black king vs any white's army that has over 10 pawns worth of material. The number 10^60 could be taken down to maybe 10^40. There are ways to make chess manageable.
Revised numbers (I looked at Wikipedia haha):
All legal positions= 10^47-10^50
Legal nontrivial positions= Maybe as few as 10^30-10^35?
So from a whole universe of matter we have come down to maybe a few tens or hundreds of kilograms?
Anyone who says that chess will always be out of our reach hasn't looked at the numbers and understood them. Within 30 years a team of amateurs could see this as a challenge among many other challenges. So sorry Kasparov, you pushed pieces on a board but you aren't a programmer or a mathematician. I hate it when people don't bother to look at the raw numbers and understand the concepts involved but instead just repeat whatever an authority said.
Unrated violet collectors should rather concentrate at the numbers, and let Kasparovs "pushing pieces at the board". Most of us are interested in woodpushing, not logistics.
Violets_are_blue wrote:
Revised numbers (I looked at Wikipedia haha):
All legal positions= 10^47-10^50
Legal nontrivial positions= Maybe as few as 10^30-10^35?
So from a whole universe of matter we have come down to maybe a few tens or hundreds of kilograms?
Anyone who says that chess will always be out of our reach hasn't looked at the numbers and understood them. Within 30 years a team of amateurs could see this as a challenge among many other challenges. So sorry Kasparov, you pushed pieces on a board but you aren't a programmer or a mathematician. I hate it when people don't bother to look at the raw numbers and understand the concepts involved but instead just repeat whatever an authority said.
i think chess could get into a computers reach but never a humans reach. good luck memorizing that!
You should learn how to read before you criticize Kasparov. The figure you came up with is the possible games, not the number of legal positions. The figure based on the there being an average of 30 moves per turn. This number contains a lot of transpositions.
The formula for figuring number of positions would be something like this. each square has 11 possibilities (there are 5 different type of pieces x 2 colors, or the square could be empty) 11^64 would be the top limit. This includes all squares of one colored King), so you would have to find a way to subtract all the illegal positions. While this is a huge number, it is no where near the number Shannon estimated as the number of possible games. Kasparov probably was close.
Kasparov said the figure 10^120 when the figure that is interesting, number of positions, can be as low as 10^43.
According to Wikipedia checkers has the search-tree complexity of about 10^40. How crazy would I be if I used this number to prove that checkers will never be solved, or said that it would take 50 more years? Kasparov simply doesn't know what he is talking about.
Mar 22, 2012
0
#120
Violets_are_blue wrote:
Revised numbers (I looked at Wikipedia haha):
All legal positions= 10^47-10^50
Legal nontrivial positions= Maybe as few as 10^30-10^35?
So from a whole universe of matter we have come down to maybe a few tens or hundreds of kilograms?
Anyone who says that chess will always be out of our reach hasn't looked at the numbers and understood them. Within 30 years a team of amateurs could see this as a challenge among many other challenges. So sorry Kasparov, you pushed pieces on a board but you aren't a programmer or a mathematician. I hate it when people don't bother to look at the raw numbers and understand the concepts involved but instead just repeat whatever an authority said.
Do you understand how enormous those numbers are?
Eventually chess will be "solved" in all variations, but it won't be one clear path to the solution. You would have to memorize all the computer analysis, which would be several times more difficult than memorizing all the GM games since 1970, but if you only truly knew and understood the latter you should be able to play at IM level at least.
So the "solution" won't kill human-vs-human OTB play, if and when it is found.
Solving chess will spell the end for chess engine competitions. If a 32-piece tablebase is easily accessible, then solving chess will render internet chess unplayable (cheating would be rife with no effective way of proving it). However, it will not have a great impact on human v human OTB chess at the club level at least. Players will continue to play the same openings they have always played, follow the same strategy they have always followed. I doubt chess at the professional level will continue as it does now, and would have to adapt somehow. I mean, when big prize money and funding is concerned, who is going to stump up the cash for a board game that has been solved, the solution being out there? Of course, it would be impossible for a human to memorize such a complex solution, however, the stigma of dedicating your life to a solved game will tarnish chess at the professional level.
On a final note, analysing your games will become quite a dull affair, as you consult your 32-piece tablebase you will remark, "damn, I missed a chance to force mate in 86 moves, giving my opponent the chance to force stalemate in 180 moves..."
Not to try riding a dead horse or to tick off the mods, but isn't this already happening, not just here, but on all chess game websites?