True or false? Chess will never be solved! why?

See a parallel forum for the likely way this question will be answered.

The FIDE basic rules of chess are the articles from 1 to 5. Look at the first page.

Article 9 comes under competition rules.

Aesthetically and from the point of view of game theory, 50 or 75-move rules are ugly and unnecessary, but for avoiding interminable waste of time in real games, they are useful. When a position requires you play a huge number of precise moves to advance a pawn one square, this is probably not suited to humans.

Fair enough.  Didn't notice that distinction.

More relevant than the number of atoms in the universe is the number of possible arrangements/states of those atoms. (And apparently a lot of stuff in the universe isn't atoms anyway.)

#1224

"You don't think Black ever reaches a position in any line where the top engine move, for a given engine, wouldn't hold the draw, but another one would?"
++ If the calculation ends in a table base draw, then that retrospectively validates all top 1 black moves as good enough to draw

"Engines lose to each other all the time."
++ Not at all. In TCEC they have to impose slightly unbalanced openings to avoid all draws.
Most misevaluations of engines happen in the early stage with more than 26 men, where the game is most complex.

"So "top 1 move" is nonsense on its face"
++ Top 1 for black is correct as long as the calculation ends in a table base draw

"if you have to even go to top 4 for both sides in most positions to be safe"
++ Top 4 is necessary for white, not for black. You can argue about a theoretical possibility that top 1, top 2, top 3, and top 4 are white mistakes and top 5 is no mistake. Sometimes there even are no reasonable 4 white moves.

"how about solving one subset of an ECO code to the 7-piece tablebases"
++ even 1 ECO code is still a huge task requiring 5 years on 1 modern computer

Νο.

Same discussion as in the other thread .... a fixation with huge numbers and the number of atoms in a boiled egg. This doesn't have a direct effect on the possibility of solving chess, which would use methods other than a pointless, brute force search of possible positions.

False, as referred to in the alphazero page by someone i forgot, there are too many moves to record in our universe.

It wouldn't actually be KNRvKR because the longest mate in that endgame is 37 moves.

There was a 75 move rule briefly introduced in 1989 (according to Wikipedia, so take with a pinch of salt)  for certain endgames only which included KBRvKR, which does have mates that can't be effected within the 50 move rule.

I think the 2017 rule was introduced just to avoid problems with tournament schedules and keep the sponsors happy.

Yes, it will be solved because the computers are getting stronger almost day by day.

I think if it's solved, humans will play a greater part.

When people quote numbers you should check out the numbers, not just accept what they say.

Aesthetically Guy Haworth's DTR metric is not ugly (merely difficult). 

Sadly Guy recently died.

If there's no arbiter, the players don't notice and the game ends defined, could the loser appeal later? Just out of curiosity.

I doubt it, and there's no expectation that an arbiter has to be watching because they use their judgement to decide which games to watch. Sooner or later maybe, but if both players weren't keeping score then there would be no grounds for an appeal. In a match, both team captains together have the powers of an arbiter but they might have to have their decisions checked by a real one.

I see, thanks.

If there's no arbiter the game is apparently not being played under competition rules and the 50/75 move rules and 3-fold/5-fold repetition rules are not in effect.

If the game is played under competition rules, the Arbiter's handbook says:

In both 9.6.1 and 9.6.2 cases the Arbiter must intervene and stop the game, declaring
it as a draw.

The competition rules game in any case terminates by the rules when the 75 move rule and/or 5-fold repetition rule conditions are met. The result is a draw. Whatever the arbiter or players do subsequently is not part of the game. If the the result is incorrectly recorded because no-one has noticed, an appeal should be successful.

Faulty logic.

If the basic rules of chess were amended to make the board size say 1000000 x 1000000 and the starting position just a black king on one of the central four squares and a white king on a1 and white rook on a1000000, then the average number of pairs of moves by White and Black throughout the game would exceed 4000000. A mate would need around 1000000 moves.

A total beginner would nevertheless have no difficulty solving the game.