50% of the time, it works every time!
False to the question on page 1. Computing is about to go light speed, and that should solve it.
True or false? Chess will never be solved! why?
Sort:
That's a nice line of reasoning there. We can't know anything with 100% certainty, so our threshold for "knowlege" must be somewhat less than that.
If I make up a degree of certainty that appears to meet this newly lowered bar I can prove anything.
For what it's worth, I'm 99.9% sure this is crap.
So all of you guys are saying, we will end up someday like Tic-Tac-Toe, we can play, yikes, but Masters and others who really know chess and Tic-tac-toe (guess here), does the satisfaction of agreement, negate a real investment to learning or just enjoying, like the computer in the movie "WarGames" said "How about a nice game of chess". Sort of like Tic-tac-toe will end in a draw (a smaller number of possible moves) is for kids (probably non-chess players, kids,...) and chess is for....______, It is interesting to debate this aspect of the game "none the less" (in US one word )....lol..... You all make great points here!
The strong solution for tic-tac-toe is trivial and can be easily understood and executed by a person.
The strong solution for chess would not be, so it would have little to no practical applications.
Jul 12, 2013
0
#527
As much as I hate to agree with TheGrobe, chess isn't currently solved by any definition. I have argued that it can/will be solved, and we can debate on exactly how solved is defined, but it is not solved already.
How can we call chess solved when highest level tournament play with humans vs. humans (or computers vs. computers) generates something like 45% draws, 35% white wins and 20% black wins? Shouldn't "solved" be 100% draws, 100% white wins or 100% black wins?
After 600 posts this discussion is really starting to zero in on the core of this subject. Pass the popcorn, and have another beer. 
P.S., some of the solutions for a 7-man tablebase require more than 540 moves to execute. Imagine the practical significance of future solutions when more pieces are added. Somewhere between zero and none, methinks.
TheGrobe wrote:
The strong solution for tic-tac-toe is trivial and can be easily understood and executed by a person.
The strong solution for chess would not be, so it would have little to no practical applications.
how can you say?? if chess is solved they can look up the optimal strategy for everything. I think it will totally ruin chess.
Just because chess is solved doesn't mean we'll be able to comprehend the solution. Even today, engines make moves that we don't understand at all, and many of these are likely sub-optimal. There will be little practical applications, save for maybe busting a couple of openings.
TetsuoShima wrote:
TheGrobe wrote:
The strong solution for tic-tac-toe is trivial and can be easily understood and executed by a person.
The strong solution for chess would not be, so it would have little to no practical applications.
how can you say?? if chess is solved they can look up the optimal strategy for everything. I think it will totally ruin chess.
With a solution for chess the refutations and winning lines would be so long and of such great number that memorization would be of even less practical value than memorizing computer generated lines today.
Chickens can be trained to play Tic Tac Toe.
I witnessed a chicken win against some guy at a NYC Italian Street Fair. 
I was next up for the contest. Sweating and anxious, I managed to draw. Just barely.
Take for example queen and pawn endgames. Players have access to perfect play in some of these complex endings but no one ever bothers memorizing 100 lines each for the 100 key posotions (numbers just for sake of argument).
From the starting position of any opening there would be an arbitrarily larger number of lines necessary to memorize. Say a billion bilion lines to prove the sicilian is a draw, and a billion billion more to refute many of the bad moves.
Like grobe said it would mostly be totally useless.
Saying something is crap does not make it crap.
Saying chess with best play is a draw does have some practical value.
It is educational. When a chess coach is teaching a new player this is part of the knowledge of chess and emphasizes that to lose you must make a mistake and to win your opponent must make a mistake.
ponz111 wrote:
Saying something is crap does not make it crap.
Saying chess with best play is a draw does have some practical value.
It is educational. When a chess coach is teaching a new player this is part of the knowledge of chess and emphasizes that to lose you must make a mistake and to win your opponent must make a mistake.
No more than saying something is known makes it known.
It is so sure white is winning - how about any first move is weakness that can be exploited with perfect play.
Meaning that the initial position is zugzwang?
Possibly, though I suspect it's the least likely outcome.
Turns out it's a forced win for white:
TheGrobe wrote:
Meaning that the initial position is zugzwang?
Possibly, though I suspect it's the least likely outcome.
It is very unlikely but humans and engines play far from perfect...
CLINTEASTW00D wrote:
It is so sure white is winning - how about any first move is weakness that can be exploited with perfect play.
It's pretty sure it's a draw actually.
Everything else being equal, an extra pawn isn't enough to win an endgame. Similarly it takes more than a small positional advantage to win too.
Because the starting position is symmetrical and the first many moves are not forcing, chess is very likely a draw until one of the players commits a mistake.
As a simple test, if this were true, we would expect to see more draws as the level of play increases, which is exactly what we do see. This doesn't prove anything yet of course, but it's all very logical and reasonable.
I'm 87.34% sure that you're dehydrated!