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

That means he can't be checkmated.

MISTER McCHESS  The word "mistake" can have dozens of different meanings. Even as regards to chess the word "mistake" can have several different meanings. You yourself used that word and gave it two different meanings in your posts.

Just because you say that move was a mistake does not mean it was a mistake,  A GM might make that move for a very good reason.

But  ,most of all we have defined "mistake" in a certain way for clarity. So it relates to our long discussions in this forum. 

Defining terms is very important  in a discussion so there is a mutual understanding of important concepts. 

Otherwise we could have a big waste of time as many people could delay conversations as each could have a different  definition of important words.

Finally you understand what a hopeless argument it is to say that you must have actual proof before knowing something is true. Now go and tell all the people who kept saying it to Ponz how their argument is so bad it's not worthy of discussion.

nah. best play doesnt lead to a draw, it leads one of this sides to zugswang, and a losing move that cannot be avoided

"best play" is a dogma. formulaic.  to avoid the zugswang moment, innovation must enter the game

sacrifice the rook and then run amok with the queen on the pawns

or Q to f-3 and you are behind the pawns on your next move

@ mister chess, your statement about everyone having their own definition for important words is what the fable of the tower of Babel is REALLY about.  not many different languages but instead, everyone having their own idea about what something means

"confusing our languages"   and destroying us

Then he can't be checkmated! 

We disagree on a few things, but you are also likeably disagreeable. I can disagree with you, but still like you. And that keeps things going. Meaning we can continue to talk about things another day whether they are good bad or indifferent.

I see you are going down the same road I went down a few months ago. So we have that in common too. Maybe there is a club for us, because I know there are a lot more than just us two. Be hopeful he doesn't stalk you too. 

You can contort and pretend you've scored some point, but it doesn't really do you any good.  There's not an equivalence there, and you've not achieved some "teachable moment" .

Sure, that's why, misquoting Shakespeare was a ploy to test me ...

Don't understand how some people can be so arrogant as to tell me what I  know or don't know.?

"Arrogance is weakness disguised as strength."  Not sure of the author of that quote? [but it is almost always true]

The people who do this are often only average players or less than average.

And none who say this are aware of much of the evidence regarding the question of this forum.

Do they think they can read my mind?

GMproposedsolutions   The problem is the word "best" can have several different meanings?

VedSM  I could give you many examples of best moves. [by any definition but we are using a certain definition for clarity in this forum]

You do realize that the top engines do not play the best chess?

GMprop  Could you give a sentence with your idea/definition? 

He's right though, "best" moves do not exist in that sense.  Engines, as you correctly pointed out, do not play the best chess...and are in fact incapable of determining perfect play.  Humans are obviously in the same boat and worse.  The combination of the two together is stronger, but two imperfect sources of play cannot produce perfect play, either.  That's inherently obvious.

btickler  NO what you say in your last sentence is not inherently obvious.

This is because at the very highest levels of chess there have been perfect games played. There are correspondence players who have not lost a game in a decade and the very top correspondence players are WAY STRONGER than you think. 

he plays low B-level chess Fonz. so re: to consider the source. and know he's probably never played a CC game.

You couldn't claim to know a "perfect" game.  That's the whole point.

And no, the very top correspondence players are not way stronger than I think.  They are no stronger than any other human GM...and at least 500 ratings points lower than a decent engine.

Rather, you vastly overestimate your abilities, especially at this point.  

As for Lola...well, I have played plenty of correspondence going back to postal cards, probably well before your first mani/pedi.  If you meant "CC" as centaur chess, then obviously not as much, but I have experience.  More than enough to comment here.  Hell, I predicted the emergence of machine learning engines that would knock traditional engines off their perches years before A0/Leela came along, by playing games in their own sandbox, and determining valuations *without* human interference/bias.  Human beings accumulated knowledge of chess through thousands of years of history was eclipsed in hours.  That's the sum total/worth of human play in determining "best play", or solving chess.

Largely immaterial, though.  The engines and their accumulated "knowledge"/wealth of data is far more important to the answer to this question than any human players' musings about it. 

Hell, I predicted the emergence of machine learning engines that would knock traditional engines off their perches years before A0/Leela came along, by playing games in their own sandbox, and determining valuations *without* human interference/bias.  Human beings accumulated knowledge of chess through thousands of years of history was eclipsed in hours.  That's the sum total/worth of human play in determining "best play", or solving chess.  Not much.

The DeepMind team is helping Kramnik figure out chess variants currently, for example.  It's a form of respect to Kramnik, and I am sure they love to hobknob around with him in the lab...but they don't need him.  He needs them.  Developers > players in this context.  Much the same way that a horsebreeder is a more important person in determining whether a horse has good odds of winning a race than a human steeplechase runner who can't even truly relate to a horserace, but also races in their own fashion.  Now in centaur chess, it's more like jockey + plus horse, but the horse is still the deciding factor, and the jockey's main asset is being short and light enough to affect the horse's speed as little as possible.  It's a mostly symbolic pairing that isn't really necessary, but it helps the humans feel better .  Nobody wants to see the check being handed to the owner and trainers, they want to see the rider as the winner.  The rider is incidental.  Human beings are already next to worthless in any determination of best play, and that gap is only going to become more pronounced over time, not less.  In 50 years from now, there won't be any point in human GMs trying to commentate on TCEC finals, etc.  There will still be centaur chess, and human beings will still pretend they matter significantly in the outcome...but their role by then will be more like the spectator that hands a marathon runner a cup of water as they run by.

As for B-level chess, I will clearly have to defer to your knowledge in this arena.