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Subject: Re: What do programmers think about a chess algorithm??

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 16:46:44 12/10/02

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On December 10, 2002 at 18:31:38, Dann Corbit wrote:

>On December 10, 2002 at 18:19:43, Ingo Lindam wrote:
>
>>On December 10, 2002 at 18:12:53, Dann Corbit wrote:
>>
>>>On December 10, 2002 at 17:55:51, Dann Corbit wrote:
>>>
>>>>On December 10, 2002 at 17:51:40, Ingo Lindam wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On December 10, 2002 at 17:30:47, Dann Corbit wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On December 10, 2002 at 13:42:36, Bernardo Wesler wrote:
>>>>>>[snip]
>>>>>>>THE ALGORITHM. A MATHEMATICAL FORMULA THAT , FOR EXAMPLE, ASSURE YOU THAT IF YOU
>>>>>>>DO THE FIRST MOVE YOU ALWAYS WIN.
>>>>>>>I MEAN TO THINK ABOUT DISCOVERING A CHESS ALGORITHM IS AN UTHOPY?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Provably impossible on current hardware and software systems.
>>>>>>Maybe in 100 years the game will be formally solved.  Not in the near futre.
>>>>>
>>>>>provably impossible on current hardware...?
>>>>>are you sure?
>>>>
>>>>Absolutely sure.
>>>>
>>>>To solve chess you must store at least the square root of nodes of the solution
>>>>tree.  Considering the half move clock and castle rights, it easily exhausts any
>>>>possibility of solution.
>>>>
>>>>>without assuming anything about the kind of solution?
>>>>
>>>>No assumptions are necessary.  We pick an adversary in the tree.  It's just like
>>>>how you would prove a sort works in O(f(n)).
>>>>
>>>>>atleast you are assuming the use of hardware...
>>>>>(an assumtion I could live with because I wouldn't bet on find the solution
>>>>>faster by using just a pencil and a sheet of paper :-))
>>>>
>>>>I am assuming that if you turned the universe into silicon chips and devoted
>>>>half of them to CPU's and the other half to memory storage that all the stars
>>>>will go out before you find the answer.
>>>>
>>>>>me would like to see the proof for 'provably impossible' as much as I would like
>>>>>to see the solution for chess
>>>
>>>10^48 formations * 100 states for half-move clock * 4 bits for castle state.
>>>sqrt(1.5e+51) = 38729833462074168851792654 [64 moles of positions ;-)]
>>>
>>>Assume that you can access one position in one nanosecond -- better yet, we will
>>>assume that we can correctly compute the value in one nanosecond, access the
>>>relevant parts and save the result in one nanosecond.  We will assume that our
>>>algorithm is totally optimal and move ordering is perfect so that we can achieve
>>>the square root of the tree factor.
>>>
>>>It would take 38729833462074169 seconds to fill the tree.  That is 448261961366
>>>days and 1,228,114,962 years.
>>>
>>>This is an incredibly conservative estimate.  It would probably take at least
>>>one thousand times that long.
>>
>>yes,
>>this IS an incredible conservative estimate of SOMETHING...
>>BUT NOT...
>>of the size/time of a proof/solution.
>>
>>the esitmation has completely nothing to do
>>with the question whether chess is solvable in general or not...
>>
>>just try to get the point :-)
>
>Happy solving fellows.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

I do not believe that it is possible to solve it with the hardware of today so
I am not going to try.
It is not a proof that it is impossible to solve it.

Uri



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