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

Facts:

a) I know I didn't ban him

b) You accused him of "more or less calling you a liar" on my thread which I didn't see at all.

c) He disagreed repeatedly with you.

d) By your own admission, you block people from posting on threads and whine to chess.com staff about controlling threads.

e) All his posts are gone for no apparent reason.

I'm really good at drawing inferences even if you deny them. 

I think you need a complete attitude readjustment on these threads starting with your aggressive attitude about this.  There were lots of posts and posters here who wanted to add valuable insights into a question that you think is 99% certain without anything very conclusive to point to.  I think you should find George and jaaas and others and ask them to forgive you and beg that they teach you some things that your obstinacy has prevented you from learning.  In the meantime, maybe there can be a stimulating discussion among the chess.com community about an interesting question of chess that is not dominated by aggressive rhetoric and obnoxious behavior. 

"You apparently have an ax to grind"

Yes.  I started a thread decrying something that happened to my own darn thread.  I completely support everyone's right to speak freely within very normal bounds that everyone on that thread respected (except maybe you with your "more or less accused me of being a liar"). 

Huebner once said: those who say they understand chess know nothing

chiaroscuro62 to respond

a. you know you did not ban him. This means I banned him?

b. Yes, he more or less called me a liar.  I gave the very specific reasons I asked for the one thread be put on hold and he was ignoring my reasons and giving a completely different reason [which was not true at all]

c. he disagreed repeatedly with you.  So what, lots of people disagree with me.  They are still disagreeing with me.

d. I have blocked a few people but not for disagreeing with me. And I have not whined to staff about controling threads.  I have 49 threads and not one of them is blocked and the one I asked to be temporarily blocked --I changed my mind and asked it be unblocked.

e.  lot his posts are gone for no apparent reason.  So this means I had his posts deleted?  Because YOU cannot think of a reason why this would happen?  Many of his posts were rather uncivil and maybe that is why they were deleted?  I actually don't know why they were deleted.

Any thinking and unbiased person should be able to tell your accusations that I may have had something to do with what happened to George Jetson are per your own mindset.

The last line in GONE WITH THE WIND applies here : "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."   And I think just about everyone on this thread here agrees with me, so let's put this interlude to bed and all leave as friends and still greet when we bump into other on the pavement. Does not have to be a cheerful greeting - a grumpy hi will be ok.

Nobby   yes, you are correct.  It is hard not to defend myself when accused but that is what I should have done.  Now on accusatory topic off limits.

I believe that there was an interesting conversation here that in large measure Ponz couldn't follow.  George and others tried to help ponz follow that discussion but Ponz didn't like that.  In particular, I find it stunning that Ponz argued for page after page about heuristic chess and then when all the posts about chess heuristics were gone ponz asks what heuristics means. 

The fact is that there was a discussion that kept trying to get started about the relationship between perfect chess and heuristic chess.  taht question was asked again and again with lots of defensive responses.  Turns out that ponz didn't know what heuristic chess was.  How deeply could someone who doesn't know what the word "heuristic" means have thought about how we can achieve perfect chess using heuristics? How much could he know about heuristic optimization or the likelihood of that working? 

If you don't know something about what is being discussed, you ask questions or keep quiet. 

The really scary thing is that what ponz knows about perfect chess, heuristic chess, computer chess, etc. is pretty apparent to me and anybody else reading these threads.  And ponz probably still thinks that his "99% sure chess is a draw" is an intelligent statement.

Because I asked what was meant by "heurestics" does not mean I did not know what it meant.  That word has more than one meaning and I wanted to know the particular meaning being used here. As it turns out I was correct.

Being absolutely sure of word meanings is necessary in these discussions If someone asks a question that does not mean he does not know what the word means. In this case I wanted to clear the meaning for everybody.

And yes, it is an intelligent statement for me to say I am 99% sure chess is a draw.  There are many who are sure chess is a draw.  

Can someone play a perfect game of chess [one with no errors which would change the outcome of the game] using heurestics?  The answer is "yes" and supergrandmasters do this sometimes. Also grandmastesr do this sometimes.  Even masters.

Re playing perfect chess - this is close to happening now in Centaur Chess.

FirebrandX is saying [if I understood him] that if someone wants to go for a draw [either White or Black] he can achieve this.  

Centaur Chess is the highest or I should say strongest form of chess we have now.  It is using the strongest chess engines with human guidance and this makes it stronger than chess engines alone [or heuristics alone]

So this is a combination of using heuristics along with the chess engine powers.  

What does it mean that in virtually any sound opening White's initial small advantage dissapates over time?  It is another indication that chess is a draw with best play.

Grandmasters see the type of evidence I have laid out and that is why almost all believe chess is a draw.

It is easy to say "that is not evidence"  but anything pointing to a conclusion can be "evidence."  I think when some say "that is not evidence" they really mean that "this is not sufficient evidence to 100% prove that chess is a draw."

Ponz there can be 400 Million different games after 5 moves, how can anything we know be an an indication?

How can anything we know be an indication?  An "indication" is something that points to a conclusion.  Just because there are so many chess moves does not mean that there are no indications.  It does mean that we cannot say things with 100% certainty.

Also, you can make a hypothesis and test it. If the hypothesis when tested turns out to be correct then that says something. If the hypothesis turns out not to be correct that also says something.

When you say there are 400 million different ways you can play the first 5 moves [I think this is what you mean] one can discount the vast majority of those moves as losing. For example this is one of those 400 million:

What I am saying is the vast majority of possible positions are so obviously not best play as not to be relevant to our discussion.

Ok

But think about it why should they be any indication, if for example only 10 possible moves of 200 million Lead to a forced Win and even if we can say millions are not relevant because bad. How can anything we know be and indication, i know its not a fact but how can they be an indication?

To put it another way.  It takes about a one pawn advantage to win as game. If you look at the quadzillion possible chess positions my guess is that more thaan 99% will have a material or positional advantage that it is obvious one side or the other is winning.

Chess engines cut out these positions that do not make sense as far as best play is concerned.  So do humans and expecially grandmasters. These are short cuts for trying to play the best moves.

How can centaur players look at a game to see if there was perfect play?

For one thing it would have to be a game where the chess engines show that no mistake was made to change the outcome of the game.

Can chess engines do this?  A whole lot of people say  "no" but I say "yes"

I also say it is easy for them [chess engines] to do this.

So my heurstic experience along with the help I get from strong chess engines makes me fairly sure that I could point to chess games from super grandmasters which had no errors which would change the outcome of the games.  This is what the grandmasters are saying/thinking when they say chess is a draw.  They value heuristics [along with chess engines] a lot more than some posting here. 

As a professor of math once said on this forum that the 100 billion games played are relevant. I under stand the argument that 100 billion games played are not relevant because the possible of games which can be played is many trillions of time higher. I do not agree that the small sample [100 billion] makes all our chess knowledge to date as irrelevantto the question "is chess a draw?"

I think we have an difference of opinion with one side saying the experience of grandmasters and the the findings of centaur chess mean nothing as we have only played the small sample of 100 billiion games

and the other side [which includes most very strong players] saying that this chess experience and chess knowledge means a whole lot even though we as humans have only played a very small perecentage of all possible games.

To say grandmasters are stupid because they say chess is a draw is not needed. Also those who believe we do not have 100% math proof are correct but that is not the question of this forum. The question is not "Can we prove chess is a draw with 100% math certainty"  The question is "Is chess a draw with best play"  It either is or it isn't and that is regardless of us not being able to "solve" chess.

There are "patterns" in chess that strong players see. And these patterns happen over and over again. It is part of their "heurestics"  And the patterns [and there are many such patterns] all point the same way.

It is too bad that the math professor apparently got discouraged and closed his account as he has saying that even with the [relatively] small sample size the heuristics of strong players count. 

The idea that maybe there could only be 10 possible moves which might lead to a forced win is possible but not likely at all according to the experience and knowledge of the strongest players.

One thing they say is that if there is a forced win somone would have found it by now. They also say per their chess knoledge and experience there is no win for White. So while your conjector is possible most of the strongest chess players would deem it as "highly unlikely" and again wehave the two differences of opinions as to the value of chess experience over the years [and also the value of chess engines which most strong chess players believe they are getting closer and closer to the truth]

I already corrected you once on this misunderstanding and misreading of yours in this very thread. They made no such arguments. As I said previously, George explicitly stated that he thought a draw was most likely.

+10, Thanks for the sanity.

Now that this zombie thead has returned to life, let's all be entertained (again) by the repartee, without @GeorgeJetLess, that ersatz math jock from hell.

Knock yourselves out, guys.

Sadly, I can't quote GeorgeJetson anymore. His statement that he thought a draw was the most likely result was inconsistent with other statements he made. His basic position was that there is no way to prove that chess is a draw, therefore it is just as likely that it is a win. He stated quite plainly that he did not accept the evidence of prior games, evaluations from computers, or opinions of grandmasters. He stated that such evidence was "not interesting" to him. 

But since you have taken on his mantle, Dust, how do you explain that a draw is the most likely result without resorting to the evidence already mentioned?