True or False Chess is a Draw with Best Play from Both Sides

lfPatriotGames wrote:

ponz111 wrote:

GEEZE!!! I did not say i would always make the correct moves!!! You are not reading what i am saying!

I do not need to know perfect play for every game  to understand the game of chess is a draw with perfect play!!!!!

But isn't perfect play exactly what someone needs to know before they can understand if chess is a draw or not? When it comes to perfection I would say being 99.99% sure of something is the same as being 00.01% sure of something. Both aren't perfect. It seems to me that since no one, human or machine, has ever seen perfect play it doesn't make sense to say perfect play leads to anything. It's never been done. Since we are all just guessing, I can guess that I'm 99.99% sure with "perfect play" white always wins.

👏👍

How does god know? Did he anakyze every possible chess game

False. If absolutely perfect play from both sides, then Black will never be able to regain the initiative of White's inherent advantage of going first. White has an inherent, albeit small, tempo advantage from the outset. Logically perfect play means playing no moves that cede advantage. Ergo, white would have the advantage from start to finish, meaning White wins with perfect play from both sides.

 It’s one thing to have a slight advantage, but what you are essentially saying is black starts off trapped in a mating net.  You’re saying that among the astronomically large combination of possible moves for black, nowhere in there is a single out that forces a draw. 

 I find that extraordinarily unlikely. 

I think that what the people regarded as those who really know and understand Chess game are saying is that Black's previous move before the start of the game leaves him in a position that all he can do is fight to salvage a draw.

??

Put in all the ?? you like.

It is obvious. 

How else did Black get in that mess?

I think if people from both sides play good... I think it is 50% draw 25% white win and 25% black win.

This is a ridiculous position to hold. Chess has a wide margin of error. A player can be up two knights in the endgame and still not be able to force mate. 

One doesn't have to play perfectly to draw against a perfect opponent. Chess is clearly a draw, and with a much greater margin of certainty than .01%. But to argue that 99.99% is the same as 0.01% certainty is to not understand the nature of statistics. 

Chess is like almost 100% draw where you can do siginifantly  mistakes  and can still get draw. You need 5+ material advantage than your opponent to win a game.One turn advantage is useless to win an opponent.If there were 32 men TB, i think 3 turn advantages or one pawn odd ( a or h) pawn will still be draw. (many positions of Kvs K+P and K+R+P vs K+R etc are still draw)

You just don't know how to convert an advantage. 2 pawns (no compensation) is usually enough to win.

Two pawns is potential for 19 material advantage. ( one queen is 9.5)

I thought we were talking about perfection. About "best play". Chess as we know it has a wide margin of error, but we are talking about NO margin of error. I'm sure there are a lot of possible games of chess, so both 99.99% and 00.01% certainty would include many errors and both would be a long way from perfection. So maybe this is a ridiculous position for you to hold because you know what best play is. You might know what perfection is. You might know how to solve chess. But for those of us who do not know those things, we have to say we dont know if "best play" leads to a draw or a win for either side because we haven't seen it yet.

In other words, we haven't attained perfection in chess yet, but we are close enough to the mountain top to see what is on the other side. Chess is a draw with best play. 

When engines lose, they only lose because they made identifiable errors. That includes Stockfish in the the AlphaZero match.

People need certain level of chess knowledge to understand many theoretical draw! There are many positions where there is big margin between win/draw/lose. 

Compare these two positions, in Fig 1, white can do significant mistakes such as throw away two pawns( potentially worth 19 materials ) and still draw.

In the Fig 2. Win/Draw/Lose margin is very thin, even a small positional mistake (even king opposition, zugzung etc) will change between Win/Draw/Lose.

Conclusion, when there are many pieces, there are a lot of rooms to do mistakes and still draw., (such as in opening)

From initial position with 16 pieces in both sides, there is no way to forced win from one side, it is draw.

Of course many ending positions can be draws with mistakes made. But from the start there are a lot more possibilities. If there is no way to force a win from the start, why do games end in a win? If it's because one side makes a mistake doesn't that prove we are still a long way from best play or perfection? As someone else pointed out, the higher the rating, the higher the percentage of white wins. With computers now, ratings and ability are at an all time high. And the winning percentage of white is now also at an all time high. I believe that it's still possible to improve which likely means the winning percentage of white will keep going up. But none of us know yet if that means white always wins, black always wins, or it's a forced draw. We can guess, but we dont know, because none of us have ever seen best play or perfect play before. 

, omg you need to learn chess database first, the lower the rating, the higher win/loss! The higher the rating, the more draw. 3300+ engines like SF/Komodo/Houdini  in standard 90mins/game in std pc have 90-95% draw rate now. The draw rate will be higher when the rating are even higher. In ten years, there will be 95-98% draw rate and so on. Some computer experts believe that at rating between 4000- 5000, there will be  100% draw and engines will reach perfection.(solved)

 Two engines perpetually drawing does not de facto mean they solved chess. 

From Wiki:

Allis also estimated the game-tree complexity to be at least 10123, "based on an average branching factor of 35 and an average game length of 80". As a comparison, the number of atoms in the observable universe, to which it is often compared, is roughly estimated to be 1080.

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 Exponents don’t copy and paste correctly, that’s 10 to the 123 power, or 1 followed by 123 zeros.  Chess will never be solved in our lifetime. 

False, cause white always starts. They get the first move and the first chance to advance.