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

It's not too often that I agree with Optimissed's "logic", but here I think he may have a point.

A zugzwang position normally means a board layout where Black has a forced win if it's White to play and White has a forced win if it's Black to play. However the initial board layout with Black to play is illegal, so can it properly be called a zugzwang position? 

I don't think that follows.  The fact that it isn't Black's move (which I guess is what you mean by "the initial board layout with Black to play is illegal") shouldn't have any bearing on the question of whether, with white to play, black could force a win. I don't see how deductive logic can foreclose the psosibility of this position being zugzwang, any more than it can with any other postition being considered for possible zugzwang.

Of course, just from experience we can say with about 99.99999999999999999999% confidence that the opening position isn't zugzwang.  But there's no logical, a priori, reason it can't be. (At least not until we have a 32-piece tablebase.)

Well, actually, for example, ...

https://www.chess.com/video/player/learn-from-the-best-alphazero-the-long-grind

no draw

and theres no possible way not through the entire game, no one will make a mistake

Never saw a game lost with 100% accuracy...

Oh? Who was judging? So, you've thought about this for 3 seconds...

I forget, were you the guy who tried to argue with a hypothetical and lost?

Why?? Do you have any idea what you're talking about?

Please figure it out, we need to see this

Ya... like what would the result be? All draws? Why is it not all wins now?

true

Oh dear.  Not a favorite of mine.  He probably wouldn't like being compared to a Derridean like me either. But you don't have to be an adherent to one philosophical school or another in order to think that arguments should be made with precision.

As I said, I'm not really someone who thinks that formal logic is always the best route to understanding things.  But if it's going to be put in the terms of formal logic -- and those are the only terms on which we can analyze the question of a forced win or forced draw (as opposed to a likely win or likely draw) -- then it should be done right.  I mean, you're the one who said it's logically impossible for there to be a forced win for black.  Maybe you meant that we can pretty reliably guess that the opening position isn't a win for black, but then you should just say that. (And if so, your interlocutor is still right that that's irrelevant to point they were making.)

Conceptual clarity and precision are important.  And logic is perhaps the one place where the conceptual difference between 99.99999999999999999999% certainty and 100% certainty actually matters.  To logic, if perhaps nowhere else, those are and have to be qualitatively different things.

Intuition is a valuable, deeply practical tool and one that's often comes in very handy in chess (and elsewhere).  But there's no such thing as being an "intuitive logician" -- unless you just mean you're someone who thinks intuitively, in which case just say so.  (Inductive logic is, of course, a real thing, which may be closer to what you mean, but it requires that you state the logical terms and methods very clearly, and also requires that you acknowledge the ways in which induction leaves doubt). Don't try to give what you're doing the authority we bestow (sometimes excessively) upon logical reasoning, which it isn't. 

its prolly true most of the time. it depends on when they start playing the best moves of course.

GilbertJiangHB what

Stockfish vs Leela had a lower draw ratio than GMs matches. Thats trend do prove the theory of forced win if a game is played perfectly.

mmmm this is a tough question

It is pretty obvious by now for any really strong chess player that chess is a draw.

More likely, it suggests that grandmasters (1) are inclined to agree to draws before a game really is completely drawn, (2) sometimes miss very long-term winning ideas in drawish-looking positions, and (3) are inclined, at certain junctures to play safer, more drawish moves, when they don't trust themselves to calculate long, double-edged lines with computer-like accuracy.