Will computers ever solve chess?

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tygxc

#6880
It matters. Many players quit checkers after it was solved to be a draw.

Elroch

It's positions that count for a precise strategy. It doesn't generally matter how you got to a position if it is your list of positions that mate in 75 (or whatever). Likewise in the openings, the route to a position is of no interest once you get there.

DiogenesDue

Thanks, I pulled an interesting paper from that StackExchange thread:

https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/The_Limits_of_Quantum_Computers.pdf

It's an older article but describes the limits of quantum computing better than most articles I have seen.

pfren
tygxc έγραψε:

#6880
It matters. Many players quit checkers after it was solved to be a draw.

 

The competitive checkers (100-square board) isn't solved yet, and quitting a game because the computer found a solution which noone will ever be able to memorize is ridiculous.

Iron-Toad

How are they going to have a 32-piece tablebase ready in only 5 years if they are having so much trouble completing the 8-piece version?

tygxc

#6886
International draughts on a 10x10 board has not yet been solved, because nobody took the effort to do so. It is also conjectured to be a draw. After 8x8 checkers was solved also draughts on a 10x10 board took a dip in competitive play. Many strong draughts players flocked to chess or go.
#6888
To solve chess no 32 men table base is necessary. It is enough to calculate from the initial position towards a reasonably large table base. That is how checkers was solved: from the initial position towards a 10 men table base.

Elroch
tygxc wrote:

#6886
International draughts on a 10x10 board has not yet been solved, because nobody took the effort to do so. It is also conjectured to be a draw. After 8x8 checkers was solved also draughts on a 10x10 board took a dip in competitive play. Many strong draughts players flocked to chess or go.
#6888
To solve chess no 32 men table base is necessary. It is enough to calculate from the initial position towards a reasonably large table base. That is how checkers was solved: from the initial position towards a 10 men table base.

Easy to say, but exchanging a substantial amount of material is non-trivial, and you are starting with 32 pieces. It would be a lot easier (if impossible in the forseeable future) to make a 16 piece tablebase than to generate an opening book all of whose leaf nodes have no more than 16 pieces, because the former is a much more complex problem.

 

tygxc

Of course chess is much more complex than checkers.
However, in TCEC games the engines hit their 7 men table base around move 10.
There is already work in progress on an 8 men table base.
So a faster computer may hit an 8 men or 9 men or 10 men table base from the initial position.
It does not even need to be a full table base: illegal positions, non sensible positions with several promotions, and unbalanced positions with large army versus small army may be pruned.
The table base only needs to contain drawn positions.
Quantum computers do in 200 s what a supercomputer does in 10,000 years.

DiogenesDue
tygxc wrote:

Of course chess is much more complex than checkers.
However, in TCEC games the engines hit their 7 men table base around move 10.
There is already work in progress on an 8 men table base.
So a faster computer may hit an 8 men or 9 men or 10 men table base from the initial position.
It does not even need to be a full table base: illegal positions, non sensible positions with several promotions, and unbalanced positions with large army versus small army may be pruned.
The table base only needs to contain drawn positions.
Quantum computers do in 200 s what a supercomputer does in 10,000 years.

Your last sentence has been debunked many times already.

You are also being misleading when you say engines in TCEC "hit" their tablebase around move 10.  They might touch the tablebase in some very top lines they are calculating, but that is miniscule.  Especially when you are positing that this is an indicator chess will be solved wink.png.

tygxc

Nothing debunked at all
https://www.docdroid.net/h9oBikj/quantum-supremacy-using-a-programmable-superconducting-processor-pdf#page=5 
Look at TCEC
https://tcec-chess.com/#div=sf&game=42&season=21

move 10: 1500 table base hits
move 20: 2.5 million table base hits
move 45: 100 million table base hits

parthvadia

Think about it, even in the first move, there are a total of 400 diferent board combinations, after 2 moves its 197,742, and by the third it's over 121 million! And the number just increases as you go on, so its impractical to think you can 'solve' chess. Because each turn has so many combinations, and to compute that many combinations would take a lot of time, space, and energy, all spent on what? Solving a game.

 

In all, its possible, just not practical.

pfren

Quantum computers do in 200 s what a supercomputer does in 10,000 years.

 

As much ignorance as  possible stored in a short sentence.

And the TCEC games, where the engines are forced to play fixed opening poositions with limited time are completely useless to reach any sort of conclusion.

IMKeto
tygxc wrote:

#6880
It matters. Many players quit checkers after it was solved to be a draw.

Thats just stupid.  Quitting a game because a computer did something no human will be able to.  That makes as much sense as beginners here complaining about how engines, and opening prep have ruined chess.  Nothing in chess has changed for the 99.99% of us...no matter how much you want to think it has impacted your chess.

Chessflyfisher

Yes.

DiogenesDue
tygxc wrote:

Nothing debunked at all
https://www.docdroid.net/h9oBikj/quantum-supremacy-using-a-programmable-superconducting-processor-pdf#page=5 
Look at TCEC
https://tcec-chess.com/#div=sf&game=42&season=21

move 10: 1500 table base hits
move 20: 2.5 million table base hits
move 45: 100 million table base hits

Thanks for proving my point.

1500 hits...geez.

tygxc

#6896
"the quantum processor takes 200 seconds, while an equalfidelity classical sampling would take 10,000 years on 1M core" That is what the quoted scientific paper says. The quantum computer is faster and not just a factor 2 or 10, but 10^11.
The fact that the TCEC engines with limited time already hit the 7 men table base 1500 times by move 10 indicates that a faster quantum computer with more time can hit a table base with more than 7 men consistently from the initial position.
#6897
Checkers and even draughts players have flocked to chess and go after checkers was solved. Also competitive play of Nine Men's Morris and Connect Four has stopped after these games were solved. Capablanca already proposed his Capablanca chess and Fischer proposed Fischer Random aka Chess960.

DiogenesDue
tygxc wrote:

#6896
"the quantum processor takes 200 seconds, while an equalfidelity classical sampling would take 10,000 years on 1M core" That is what the quoted scientific paper says. The quantum computer is faster and not just a factor 2 or 10, but 10^11.
The fact that the TCEC engines with limited time already hit the 7 men table base 1500 times by move 10 indicates that a faster quantum computer with more time can hit a table base with more than 7 men consistently from the initial position.
#6897
Checkers and even draughts players have flocked to chess and go after checkers was solved. Also competitive play of Nine Men's Morris and Connect Four has stopped after these games were solved. Capablanca already proposed his Capablanca chess and Fischer proposed Fischer Random aka Chess960.

Quantum computers are only much faster for a very narrow set of applications that does not include solving chess wink.png.  Plus, IBM has disputed Google's assertions.  Their supercomputer solves the quantum-friendly problem in 2.5 days, not 10,000 years.  Slight difference of opinion.

As before, there's no leg for you to stand on until quantum computers actually achieve something that requires looping iterations and intermediate storage of results.  So many posters have already pointed this out to you...me, BlueEmu, Elroch (I think, anyway), Pfren, Llama, and so on.  Pretty much anyone with notable science chops or engine expertise has come down opposite your position, as far as I have seen.

tygxc

#6895

"in the first move, there are a total of 400 diferent board combinations"
Most of those 400 positions most are irrelevant.
It is pointless to investigate 1 e4 g6 2 Qh5, 1 d4 g6 2 Bh6, 1 e4 e5 2 Ba6 etc.
Once it is proven that the Berlin draws, then it is not necessary to investigate if the Petrov, Sveshnikov, Najdorf, French, Caro-Kann draws as well or not.
Once it is proven that the Grünfeld draws, then it is unnecessary to investigate if the Queens's Gambit declined, Slav Defence, Queen's Gambit Accepted, Nimzo-Indian Defence draw as well or not.
Once it is proven that black can draw after 1 e4, 1 d4, 1 c4, 1 Nf3, then it is unnecessary to prove that black can also draw against 1 Nh3, 1 f3, 1 a4...
So the 400 possible positions after move 1 boil down to 4 relevant positions.


"To compute that many combinations would take a lot of time, space, and energy, all spent on what?" It would be a good factory acceptance test for a quantum computer: run the same program on two quantum computers and verify that the results concur to demonstrate that the Shor autocorrection successfully handles any quantum decoherence caused by cosmic radiation.

#6901
My point is that quantum computers are faster than conventional computers and much so and thus more likely to solve chess.
If you deny that then why would IBM sell quantum computers?

DiogenesDue
tygxc wrote:

#6901
My point is that quantum computers are faster than conventional computers and much so and thus more likely to solve chess.
If you deny that then why would IBM sell quantum computers?

For applications that quantum computers are going to be good for...?

pawn8888

Probably the best way to solve chess is to work backwards. Since every game has and ending all a computer has to do is to store all the games and reuse them knowing how it ends.