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

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MARattigan
Marks1420 wrote:

White can’t be winning; he has no king!

 

That means he can't be checkmated.

ponz111

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.

Rocky64
btickler wrote:
Rocky64 wrote:

Ponz gets both my joke and analogy. But you, being so literal-minded, think it has to be one or the other, and both went over your head.

(1) Scientists can study the brain characteristics of humans and hedgehogs but no brain experiments can reveal the IQ scores of either group. If you disagree, provide links to any such studies and their results. Obviously you can't; therefore you can't prove your IQ is higher than a hedgehog's.

(2) For the sake of argument, suppose such a brain experiment is possible, predicting your IQ and a hedgehog's. Then you're faced with the problem of sampling size. You can't possibly perform this experiment with millions of hedgehogs, and only one genius hedgehog is required to disprove your claim that your IQ is higher. So again, you don't know that you're smarter than a hedgehog.

(3) How do you know that the same species of hedgehogs doesn't exist on other planets and galaxies? Have you visited every planet of the universe? Of course not. So you have no proof. All you have is faith.

Yes, and all we have is faith that the universe and anything outside our consciousness exists.  Prove to another human being that hedgehogs or chess even exists with 100% certainty.  You can't.  Yadda yadda yadda.  None of your extremely basic argument went over my head.  It's just not really an argument worthy of discussion, and by even participating here we're tacitly agreeing to the existence of chess and the existence of the issue.  It's the argument of someone who wants to think they scored a point in an argument .  

Shoo.  

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.

ganjamojo

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

ganjamojo

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

 

ganjamojo

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

 

ganjamojo

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

 

ganjamojo

@ 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

MichaelMarmorstein
Marks1420 wrote:

White can’t be winning; he has no king!

 

Then he can't be checkmated!  happy.png

lfPatriotGames
Optimissed wrote:
lfPatriotGames wrote:
Optimissed wrote:

The analogy is with the climate change deniers who ignore the evidence and the chess is a draw deniers.

I dont think there are too many "chess is a draw" deniers. There might be a lot of "chess is proven to be a draw" deniers though. 

Good point but there are different types of proof. Depends whether you're insisting on a type of proof that is unavailable at the moment but then, perhaps that would be inappropriate if we both know that is unavailable. I think we have to accept the proof that's available, if we want proof, and that's the sample size, which is being misrepresented as small when it's actually huge. Just about every type of game has been tried and the deniers are insisting that all the unviable games are looked at. But how can chess be a forced win if the winning side has to play unviable moves?

So I actually agree with Ponz that it's really just a case of facing up to the evidence we have.

If I seem a bit snappish, well, most people here are very enjoyable to talk to but there's one person who doesn't attract any sense of respect. If he could occasionally say something like "that was a good analogy but I think ....", instead of all the bombast, he would be respected. He's now going to tell us all that he doesn't care if I respect him and, in fact, he'd rather I didn't because then he must be doing something right.  But no, because if he carries on through life like that, it won't just be me.

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. 

DiogenesDue
Rocky64 wrote:

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.

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" wink.png.

DiogenesDue
Optimissed wrote:

And yet, I used "hoist with his own petard" (it's actually "with" by the way, not "by") quite recently in a post.  Maybe you saw it.>>

Yes, I did. I used "by" because the sense is exactly the same and I wondered if you would correct me.

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

ponz111

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? shock.png

ponz111

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

ponz111

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?

ponz111

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

DiogenesDue
ponz111 wrote:

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?

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.

ponz111

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. 

 

Thee_Ghostess_Lola

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

DiogenesDue
ponz111 wrote:

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. 

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 wink.png.  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.