Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Chess solved - a different approach

Author: Graham Laight

Date: 02:32:47 03/17/00

Go up one level in this thread


One way to calculate the quality of two equal chess players is the proportion of
draws they score.

Generally, I think I'm correct in saying that, the better the players, the more
likely that their game will end in a draw.

If I had time, I'd get a chess database, and try to correlate likelihood of a
draw with playing strength.

But if this assertion is correct, then when you get the point where the players
cannot beat each other, the game is solved.

Again, if I had the time, I would try to create a graph of the proportion of
draws in computer games over time. It might tell us nothing - but it might show
us where we are in relation to "solving" chess.

If anyone would have a stab at doing this in an impartial way - even if it was
only a "quick view" rather than a "rigorous study", I think that many of us
would love to know the result!

Maybe the SSDF database could be a good starting point?

-g

On March 17, 2000 at 00:56:19, Vincent Vega wrote:

>On March 16, 2000 at 23:48:43, Hans Havermann wrote:
>
>>On March 16, 2000 at 10:41:56, blass uri wrote:
>>
>>>My program calculated an upper bound(ignoring things like side to move,
>>>50 moves rule) and found 3.7010630121207222927827147741452119115968e46
>>
>>>Retko v.tomic found a smaller number and I do not remmeber the number
>>>but it was not less that 1e46.
>>
>>The estimate 64!/(32!*8!^2*2!^6) ~ 10^43 is given by Shannon in his
>>seminal paper "Programming a Computer for Playing Chess", Phil. Mag.
>>41 (1950) 256-275 (also in D. Levy's "Computer Chess Compendium").
>
>Whatever the exact number is, it means that chess could be solved in 50-60 years
>if Moore's Law holds.  That's a big if, but it could happen even sooner if
>advances like practical quantum computers occur.



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.