Will Chess ever be "solved"?
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NikkiLikeChikki
Jun 7, 2021
0
#41
I love how people just throw out definitive statement yanked out of some dark hole. First, to solve for win, you only need to find one example, not search the totality of all possible moves. One line, that’s it. To prove draw you need to exhaust all possibilities, which seems hopeless, but who really knows. Maybe one day the computer power will exist. Maybe. Doubt it, but maybe. That’s a lot of possible moves. We’re talking running all the computers in the world running until the heat death of the universe would just scratch the surface.
"Piú che 'l doppiar de li scacchi s'inmilla"
Dante, Paradise XXVIII, 93
More than the doubling of chess it enthousands itself.
That was more than 700 years ago and talking about the number of angels in paradise.
The game is already solved when there are 7 or less pieces. No matter where the pieces are the computer knows the outcome. Search up tablebases.
chesskidABC wrote:
Do you guys ever think a computer will be able to calculate all the moves from the starting position?
If so, do you think Chess will lose popularity, or do you think it won't have any affect on popularity?
No.
It won't happen.
n8boy wrote:
Obviously it will be solved, where white will always win because of the one move ahead advantage, or possibly draw and I predict it will be solved within 30 years...if you go back 30 years it's 1988, think about the progress we have since then + the singularity is supposed to be pretty soon to. Exciting times.
You missed out the "won't". But fancy thinking chess is a forced win!
NikkiLikeChikki wrote:
I love how people just throw out definitive statement yanked out of some dark hole. First, to solve for win, you only need to find one example, not search the totality of all possible moves. One line, that’s it. To prove draw you need to exhaust all possibilities, which seems hopeless, but who really knows. Maybe one day the computer power will exist. Maybe. Doubt it, but maybe. That’s a lot of possible moves. We’re talking running all the computers in the world running until the heat death of the universe would just scratch the surface.
That doesn't seem very logically correct, though. If a win is a unique line, that's much harder to find than a proof that chess is a draw, which would not at all consist of evaluating every possible line but of developing algorithms that find a generalised solution, by using very different criteria from those involved in an hypothetically unique solution.
Here is a paper that shows how checkers is proved to be a draw
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231216842_Checkers_Is_Solved
The same method is applicable to chess once computers and memory have advanced more, likely before the end of this century.
Jun 8, 2021
0
#48
tygxc a écrit :
Here is a paper that shows how checkers is proved to be a draw
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231216842_Checkers_Is_Solved
The same method is applicable to chess once computers and memory have advanced more, likely before the end of this century.
That's a big no. As said in the paper you linked, checkers have roughly 500*10^20 possible position. This number is ridiculously small number compared to chess complexity (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_number , the game tree complexity is about 10^120). Since there is only ~10^80 atom in the universe, there is no way a classical computer can ever completely solve chess.
There is a small possibility that quantum computer solves chess, but to date it seems hard to make such an algorithm even assuming that we build powerful enough quantum computers in the future.
Jun 8, 2021
0
#49
infestationPit wrote:
Chess has already been solved by none other than Magnus Carlsen, the God of Chess.
I cant tell if you are joking, because of how wrong that statement is.
Jun 8, 2021
0
#50
Sir_BongCloud wrote:
tygxc a écrit :
Here is a paper that shows how checkers is proved to be a draw
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231216842_Checkers_Is_Solved
The same method is applicable to chess once computers and memory have advanced more, likely before the end of this century.
That's a big no. As said in the paper you linked, checkers have roughly 500*10^20 possible position. This number is ridiculously small number compared to chess complexity (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_number , the game tree complexity is about 10^120). Since there is only ~10^80 atom in the universe, there is no way a classical computer can ever completely solve chess.
There is a small possibility that quantum computer solves chess, but to date it seems hard to make such an algorithm even assuming that we build powerful enough quantum computers in the future.
10^120 is not the number of positions, but move sequences, i.e. games. The number of possible positions is much smaller. 10^43. Meanwhile, the visible universe has grown, increasing the number of atoms.
Even so, it remains true that with current data storage capabilities, if computers could solve chess, they would not be able to save the solution.
It just depends
Elynette wrote:
Yes
Yes.
Hi I am new here.
Jun 8, 2021
0
#54
Antonin1957 wrote:
chesskidABC wrote:
Do you guys ever think a computer will be able to calculate all the moves from the starting position?
If so, do you think Chess will lose popularity, or do you think it won't have any affect on popularity?
Yes, a computer will be someday be able to "solve" chess.
But it will not have any impact on the popularity of the game. Why would it?
When checkers was solved, professional checkers tournaments took a huge hit and they still haven't recovered.
Even though professional checkers starts with 4 premoves to keep things interesting, kind of the same idea as chess960, and that style of play has not been solved nor can it be solved in the foreseeable future, it still pretty much killed checkers.
NikkiLikeChikki escreveu:
I love how people just throw out definitive statement yanked out of some dark hole. First, to solve for win, you only need to find one example, not search the totality of all possible moves. One line, that’s it. To prove draw you need to exhaust all possibilities, which seems hopeless, but who really knows. Maybe one day the computer power will exist. Maybe. Doubt it, but maybe. That’s a lot of possible moves. We’re talking running all the computers in the world running until the heat death of the universe would just scratch the surface.
It isn't just a line. The bots would have to search literally all the possible combination of moves to all their responses until the end of the game. Also, we know a chess game can last for a very long time - according to Wikipedia the longest game lasted up to almost 270 moves. But indeed, I agree that people are throwing statements as they are completely truthful out of nowhere. Many specialists have commented about this possibility, and I'd say the outcome of this thread is really different.
Is everyone here a chess specialist and a supercomputer genius? I don't get it. In the words of many specialists themselves, chess won't be solved in a long time, if ever. I don't know why everyone is deliberately affirming that chess is going to be solved. What the hell does "solving" even mean? Finding a line that wins or draws the game with perfect play? That wouldn't even have such a huge impact, in my opinion. I mean, engines already draw and beat themselves so many times, so what would even be the point?
Jun 8, 2021
0
#57
@immaculate if you happen upon one winning line for white, the number of alternate that you have to double check is made significantly more manageable.
As for Optimissed theory that there can be some kind of mathematical proof instead of checking all lines, this is 100% speculation. There is no reason to believe that such a proof exists, and even less of a reason to believe that some genius mathematician would spend his or her life trying to solve something so pointless in order to put an end to dumpster fire threads that everyone rolls their eyes at.
As for Optimissed theory that there can be some kind of mathematical proof instead of checking all lines, this is 100% speculation. There is no reason to believe that such a proof exists, and even less of a reason to believe that some genius mathematician would spend his or her life trying to solve something so pointless in order to put an end to dumpster fire threads that everyone rolls their eyes at.
Chess has been solved for all six piece endings. Eventually it will be solved entirely but the solution will be very very large.
Jun 8, 2021
0
#59
Chess theoretically CAN be "solved". It's just a matter of checking every possible first move by white against every possible reply by black through every possible variation. This is impossible for a human to accomplish. It will take several giant advances in computer technology to make it possible, and even then it's unlikely that anyone would wish to spend the necessary time.
Even should the solution be found it wouldn't affect human play. Very few people would be able to memorize all the variations needed to force any win that was found, and all an opponent need do is make a few second-best moves to take the game out of the prepared lines.
Jun 8, 2021
0
#60
Derek, you clearly haven’t read through the thread and don’t understand the practical mathematical impossibility of solving for that many positions given our current understanding of how one would create such a database... and as of 2018 we have a tablebase for seven. Six requires 3.7 trillion positions. Seven requires 424 trillion. Eight would require 38 quadrillion and more than 5 petabytes of storage... for just eight pieces. Adding a few more pieces and we don’t even have words for the numbers or the number of bytes. To say with certainty that it will be solved is silly.