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

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?

1. Related games are draws (e.g. checkers, mini-chess, etc.)
2. If black has a winning stratedgy, then white can steal it, unless the initial position is a Zugzwang.
3. We know from the 6-man tablebase: balanced/separated material/position = draw (is it always?  I am not sure).  The initial position is balanced and separated.
4. The chess game tree has been fully explored to depth-N (not sure what N is), but there is no forced win, nor even an obvious significant advantage.  For black/white to win, it means that in these trillions (?) of positions (i.e. all balanced positions at depth N) all must also be forced wins -- this does not seem likely.

These explain my intuition that chess is a draw.  Not sure if they are new, but there does not appear to be much discussion about them. Of course, they are completely irrelevant to a mathematical proof that chess is a draw.

That's complete nonsense (the bolded part is the most blatantly wrong, as no mathematically literate person could ever make such an idiotic argument as the bolded sentence), and I'm not sure there's a much point in discussing it with you, since you don't seem to have any scruples about ignoring parts of discussions and then reconstructing the past discussion as you fancy while ignoring the parts that contradict your "memory". Had you already forgotten that I had corrected you once already, or did you remember and knowingly utter misrepresentations a second time?

The entire tone of George's discussion was to encourage skepticism that it is so close to certain that the possibility of being wrong is not even worth considering seriously, not to argue for a specific position. He was saying that there are reasons to believe the chance of something other than a draw is greater than the infinitesimal chance most of us give it, because at root this is a mathematical problem (combinatorial game theory, to be precise), and there have been cases in math where all the instincts, the heuristics, the impressions by the experts in that sub-discipline hinted toward one solution, only to be dashed when a proof to the contrary was found.

Jetson gave the example of the Q+P vs Q endgame that features some positions that human heuristics aren't sufficient to solve or even categorize adequately. We are still stuck at a 7-man tablebase and have no idea what surprises we will find if we get to larger tablebases. It's possible that there might be positions that we think are drawish but actually have counterintuitive wins that we would never have thought possible (at more than an infinitesimal probability) were it not for the tablebase proof that it is mate in 789, for example, because Black can't avoid a certain configuration of pieces that results in loss of a material after a 700-move sequence.

I do in fact believe that a draw is most likely, as did Jetson, for much the same reasons as you probably do, but after thinking about the possibilities of there being unexpected surprises buried amongst the enormous combinatorial space that is still unexplored, I no longer think that the chance of it being anything other than a draw is something like 1 in a thousand. I wouldn't put it higher than 1 in 10, and probably no higher than 5%. Jetson's estimate was more extreme, but the spirit of the discussion was not about any particular number, it was to counsel caution, because the lesson of mathematics is that gut instinct and the heuristic-based forms of reasoning that we employ when doing most things other than mathematics can be misleading when navigating nearly inconceivably large state spaces like that of chess and many other combinatorial and other mathematical problems.

There are a few positions that are so complex that they cannot be evaluated bu humans except with help from devices invented by humans.  So the point is not that humans alone could not evaluate these postions--as these positions were evaluated by humans with the help of table bases.

It does not matter if humans had the help of chess engines or table bases-the fact is these very rare postiions were evaluated correctly by humans.

It does not make a very big difference if I think chess is a draw is 99% likely and someone else thinks this is more than 95% likely. These are our opinions based [in my case] on a ton of evidence. 

Is chess a draw with best play on both sides?  The answer is an opinion as very likely we will never "solve" chess.  It is my opinion from a ton of evidence and also my hypothesis coming true that chess is a draw.

I think there may be a correlation that the better a player you are the more you will value heuristics and thus the more likely to believe chess is a draw.

However, it is not all heurestics as there is much evidence outside of heurestics.

but first how do you come up with 600 billion games? -I thought databases only have a few million games recorded.

did really every GM say so?? I dont think they really asked everyone.

their are really many ways to get an winning advantage, zugzwang and checkmate.

Computer cut certain path of circulation because they are negative, but some of those could be good along the line.

To me its still a 50 50 chance if chess is a draw or a win. Because experience has no influence on the question if chess is a win or not.

if there are for example billions over billions of ways that lead to a draw and only a hundred that lead to a win any experience and knowledge we have is totally meaningless.

TetsuoShima    Did I say 600 billion games?  Thought I said 100 billion games? Please check this out.  I am guessing 100 billion chess games have been played.  Data bases only record a small fraction of games played. Once I had a 4000 game winning streak and none of these games were recorded. 

Also you misquote me by indicating I said EVERY GM SAYS chess is a draw--I did not say that at all.  

And of course, not every GM was asked that question.  However many were asked in different situations and almost all said they thought chess was a draw. Do you really doubt that the vast majority of grandmasters think chess is a draw with best play??

Yes, of course there are many ways to get a winning advantage. However you will not get a winning advantage unless your opponent makes a mistake.

"Computer cut certain path of circulationj because they are negative, but some of those could be good along the line."  I think you mean here that the chess engines delibertly do not consider certain lines [example giving the queen away for nothing] but some lines could later be found to be good lines. [I think this is what you mean.]  It is possible this could happen but it is quite rare,.  However centaur chess mostly solves that problem.

To you there is a 50-50 chance that chess is a draw or a win.  Question, if it is a win--who wins Black or White??? Please answer this question.

"Because experience has no influence on the question if chess is a win or not."  This I disagree with completely.

Your last paragragh is conjector. However very strong players would tell you that the chances of your idea being true are very slim. 

ok its either a 50 50 chance or a 33 33 33 chance.

we cant give the percentages because the evidence is not big enough to give more weight in any favor.

when the games are not recorded the dont add to the pool of knowledge because the most often vanish.

Also centaur chess also doesnt kill the flaws mostly, otherwise GMs wouldnt always find new ideas.

also centaur chess is still prone to mistakes as you saw with grischuk in the candidates, when he said oh computer said bad so i left it that way, he didnt even look further because he thought Svidler wouldnt play it.

such lapses happen all the time.

The truth is our knowledge is no real evidence and has absolutly no bearing on the question.

my idea cant have smaller chances because there is no indication it is wrong.

TetsuoShima  You are using a logical fallacy which says if there are only two possibilities both are equally likely.  For example there are polar bears on Mars.  There are polar bears on Mars or there are not polar bears on Mars.

But one statement is quite a bit more likely.

Yes, games not recorded do not add to the pool of knowledge.

Yes, Centaur Chess sometimes can be wrong

However I do not agree that our knowledge is no real evidence or that the knowledge of the best players has no bearing on the question.

"Evidence" is anything which points towards a conclusion.  There is much evidence which points to the conclusion that chess is a draw. You can say "there is no real evidence" but to do this you have to ignore a whole lot of evidence. 

TetsuoShima  You are using a logical fallacy which says if there are only two possibilities both are equally likely.  For example there are polar bears on Mars.  There are polar bears on Mars or there are no polar bears on Mars.

But one statement is quite a bit more likely.

Yes, games not recorded do not add to the pool of knowledge.

Yes, Centaur Chess sometimes can be wrong

However I do not agree that our knowledge is no real evidence or that the knowledge of the best players has no bearing on the question.

"Evidence" is anything which points towards a conclusion.  There is much evidence which points to the conclusion that chess is a draw. You can say "there is no real evidence" but to do this you have to ignore a whole lot of evidence. 

I think sapientdust made a fine post above summarizing some of the points now lost.  A few points:

a) I'm surprised he is not banned after that outrageous remark " no mathematically literate person could ever make such an idiotic argument as the bolded sentence" about ponz.  Are you saying ponz isn't mathematically literate?  Really? 

b) The non-response of ponz was nauseating concluding with "However, it is not all heurestics as there is much evidence outside of heurestics."  The fact is there is this guy who doesn't know how to spell heuristics, didn't know the word yesterday, can't spell "conjecture" and he is arguing math.  And he is doing everything he can to silence people who are trying to help him understand something interesting.  I'm not sure if this is a ponz problem, chess.com problem, or some broader societal issue. 

c) Ponz has told us his opinion on whether chess is a draw 100's of times.  Why he thinks anybody cares is an interesting thing to ponder.  Why he even cares given that there is a huge discussion that he clearly doesn't understand is an interesting thing to ponder.

There have been repeated threads on the Ponziani here on chess.com.  Someone started one the other day about "ponziani without the spam" because the Ponziani threads all get destroyed.  Ponz won't even let a discussion about chess go on without trying as hard as he can to destroy discussion in the service of making him appear right.  He has vastly more credibility in discussing the Ponziani than in discussing mathematics. 

Making mistake is human. That is what makes chess different from

Tic-Tac-Toe. Chess is too too too too ... complicated that current intelligence level of humans has not found this answers.

chiaroscuro62

Yes, I did not spell "heuristics" correctly.  It is not true that I did not know the word "heuristics" until yesterday.  Also, I did not spell "conjecture" correctly.

There is evidence that chess is a draw outside of heuristics.

I am not stopping any discussion on this forum. Rather than the personal attacks--why not give your points of discussion on how you think I am wrong?

[I do not know of any Ponziani threads which were destroyed]

A possible response of the kind that furthers discussion.  Perhaps if we could get some intelligent discussion going on here this thread would be interesting.....

"Perhaps I mischaracterized Jetson's position.

The evidence given by Jetson in mathematical problems that turned out contrary to empirical evidence are not relevant to chess.  For example, the example about some theorem concenring prime numbers being false despite expectations happened because the space of integers is vastly bigger than the space of chess games.  That theorem wasn't true at some number like 10*10^10^100 or something that utterly dwarfs the number of possible chess games.  I would contend that we have explored the finite space of chess games much more thoroughly than we have explored the infinite space of integers.

The example of the Q+P vs Q endgame was interesting and when those results came out of tablebases they were surprising.  But Q vs Q+P endings being wins for the superior side just expand the set of winning positions without changing the fundamental argument that chess is a draw.  N v N+P  is unquestionably winning almost all (all?) the time so adding more winning positions doesn't change much and tablebases haven't changed our understanding of this position.  Chess is a draw not because people can't figure out how to convert wins, but because forcing as much as a single pawn advantage seems impossible.  Tablebases have increased our understanding of chess by showing us how to convert wins in superior positions.  My contention is that these positions are largely irrelevant because they can't be achieved to begin with.

It seems that we all agree (even Jetson) that chess is likely a draw but I think that Jetson's skepticism is misplaced (or maybe even insincere).  Both the tablebase example and the prime number theorem thing are simply not evidence of anything directly relevant to the question."