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Subject: Re: Never Say "Impossible"

Author: J. Wesley Cleveland

Date: 09:18:43 05/15/01

Go up one level in this thread


On May 14, 2001 at 15:47:47, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On May 14, 2001 at 14:51:16, J. Wesley Cleveland wrote:
>
>>On May 13, 2001 at 22:42:00, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>On May 13, 2001 at 19:48:59, J. Wesley Cleveland wrote:
>>>
>>>>On May 12, 2001 at 20:41:23, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On May 11, 2001 at 16:50:28, J. Wesley Cleveland wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>Okay. With exact results, you only need the number of plies to the next capture
>>>>>>or pawn move stored with each position to solve the 50 move rule problem.
>>>>>>Repititions are a non-problem, i.e. if from position A, you know that position B
>>>>>>is a forced win, *but* the win leads back through A, you would never choose to
>>>>>>move to B, because you would already know there is a shorter win from A.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>How would you _know_ that either of those positions were forced wins if you
>>>>>don't save _everything_ as you search?
>>>>>
>>>>You know because you have a string of positions in the hash table, each of which
>>>>is one ply closer to mate. There *can't* be a repitition, or it would be a
>>>>different string. It is just like endgame tablebases, which do not need any
>>>>history of positions.
>>>
>>>
>>>I'm not sure I follow.  Endgame tables have _all_ positions available during
>>>their creation.  That is how the algorithm works.. find a position that is
>>>marked as "unknown" by backtracking from a position marked as "known".  Then
>>>you can mark the unknown entry as mate in one more move than the known entry.
>>>But you must have _all_ positions stored during the creation... _every_ one.
>>
>>I thought that is what we were discussing. If you have a hash table large enough
>>to store every position found in the search, then you do not need total path
>>information with each position, which means you could solve chess by considering
>>"only" about 10^25 positions. So, if Moore's law holds up, we could solve chess
>>by the end of the century, rather than by the end of the universe.
>
>
>First, how do you conclude 10^25?  assuming alpha/beta and sqrt(N)?

It is a classic alpha-beta search with a transposition table large enough to
hold *all* positions found in the search. I'm guessing at the number of
positions, but I feel that the same logic should hold, as only positions with
one side playing perfectly would be seen.



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