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

I understood 

"In general, if one side can lose several moves in a complex and unclear but sharp position to produce a zugzwang, the other side can do that too and since that's the only way to win (hypothetically) it can't be done."

to be a purported proof that chess is a draw with best play. If it's not, I'm not at all sure what it is meant to be.

My argument was not designed to settle OP's question one way or other, merely to point out that your argument is definitely not a proof that it's drawn.

Neither is, "I'm saying that I know chess is a draw with optimum moves by both sides and that is mathematically provable ...". If you really did know that it was a draw, then certainly a proof would exist but it has been too difficult to date. The reality is that nobody knows.

If I were forced to bet on it I'd go for the draw but I'd feel my money was a lot safer under competition rules than basic rules. 

I sympathise with your text size problems. I think the text editing interface on this site is pants.

Not remotely true.  It is not "understood" that chess is a draw.  That's why this thread and so many other threads exists and why when you Google "is chess a draw?" you will find a ton of articles arguing back and forth.  It's why there's a Wikipedia page about solving chess.  GMs routinely disclaimer any "chess is a draw with best play" statements they make, knowing it is not proven and not "understood" as a fact by the chess world in general.

The statement you can make right now is "at the current highest levels of human and engine play, chess appears to be a draw with best play from both sides".  That is too long winded for a GM sound bite, however.

GMs know that a statement they might make that chess is a draw cannot be math proven. Nevertheless they know chess is a draw and when they play their games and when they analyze chess they assume chess is a draw.

They should probably play AlphaZero more often.

True. [/thread]

I meant GMs assume the starting position is a draw!?

NikkiKristofer    Those who express an opinion that chess players are dumb if they look at the evidence  and decide

 chess is a draw--are really dumb themselves.

Do you really have the chess knowledge to back up your statement?

I am stating definitively that chess is a draw with perfect play,

Chess is a draw with best play, unless AlphaZero 2.0 proves White is winning because of first move advantage lol

IDontPlayVoteChess   In the vast majority of chess positions there are several best moves. For this forum we are using the term "best moves" as any move that is not an error which would change the final result of the game.

We do not assume that the best move according to some computer is the actual best move. 

About 4 years ago a GM posted two positions on chess.com where the best computers gave the wrong answer.  I., as a 75 year old human solved both positions in just a few minutes. Computers ain't gawd.

Anything can happen in the vast majority of over-the-board play as one or both players often make mistakes.

However in  the highest form of chess which is correspondence chess at the highest level--all games are drawn or just about all games are drawn.

And yes there are hundreds of games with best play which have happened at the highest/strongest levels of chess.

I have not read the whole debate, so it is likely I am repeating something.  But I think there may be more intelligent ways to ask related questions.  Quantitatively we can start to enumerate and compute how many positions are known to be draws, wins, or losses for White.  Also we can start to answer the question for simplified versions of chess, using a smaller board or fewer pieces to start with, in order to make the problem more tractable for computation.   In the very beginning of the thread, it's mentioned that a side has to make a "mistake" but it's not well defined what constitutes a "mistake" and this can lead to circular arguments.  It might be good to define a mistake to mean that the following two conditions are met

 a) white has lost material and

 b) black is not close to being checkmated, or the material is not close to being regained

Then, to add definitively to the body of human knowledge in a way that academic mathematicians or game theorists would accept, theorems of the following form might be attainable

If conditions a or b are met (in a chesslike game with a certain board size and certain starting conditions) and white loses a rook or more, then it is a mistake, and white will lose more than C of the time (considering all the positions from that starting set).

If applied mathematics is to be useful for the problem, I think progress could be made in a direction like that.   Obviously the proof is going to be tricky.  Maybe C will only be 10% but even to know that would be better than endless debates about undefined terms.

Cavatine       We have already defined "mistake" for the purpose of this forum. It is any move which would change the ultimate result of the game assuming  the side that did not make a mistake plays with no mistake after the first mistake.            

Mistake is not determine by material loss though often material loss is a mistake. I am playing a game right now where one side gave up a knight for a pawn but it was not a mistake.

I have played in another game [it was an endgame] where the material was even but I gave up my knight for a pawn which met both your a and b and the move I made was not a mistake.

When I was young I gave up my knight for my opponent's 2 pawns and it left me with a lone king and my opponent with a king and a protected bishop and a protected pawn and I had not made a mistake.

Nikki   Sorry but you are simply wrong and ignorant for calling players who know a lot more about chess than you do as dumb because they are sure chess is a draw. 

Good thinkers are not 100% sure of ANYTHING. But I look at the evidence [and I know you have not looked at or understood all the evidence] and I am 99.9999% certain chess is a draw.

Both Cavatine and Nikki brought up some very good points. It WOULD make more sense to try to solve much simpler problems, like fewer pieces, some starting positions, etc. It's also obvious nobody knows the outcome of the whole game, it's just guessing.

btw, we were wondering if you are sure chess is a draw. You haven't made that clear yet. 

The "mistake" argument/definition *is* circular, as has been mentioned to Ponz many times over the years.  He feels that he can decide for himself what constitutes a positional mistake, without realizing that the only way to prove what is or is not a positional mistake past a certain point is to traverse the positions and solve for it.  Just like an 8-piece tablebase....you can feel that a position is probably a forced mate and you can even articulate why in fuzzy terms...but you don't know it's actually a forced mate in 189 moves until it is borne out by calculation.  Simplified positions that are forcing, like say a windmill, do exist but the existence of these exceptions does not prove the rule. 

what if a player resigns in a drawn position ?

Material to the "never resign" threads, maybe, but immaterial to the topic of this post.

and I am 99.9999% certain chess is a draw.

btw, we were wondering if you are sure chess is a draw. You haven't made that clear yet.

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intestinal feeling and intuition doesnt work. sorry. and frumda looks a ur avatar u can afford to be optimistic...i wont let me.

thats kinda hard on my friend...i feel.