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Subject: Re: Upper bound for number of moves?

Author: Ricardo Gibert

Date: 01:42:27 04/18/00

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On April 17, 2000 at 22:21:47, Flemming Rodler wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Given any position that can be reached in a game of chess does anybody know of a
>reasonable tight upper bound on the number of moves that can be played for one
>side. It is easy to come up with a loose bound by saying
>
>2 rooks   = max  28 moves.
>2 Knights = max  16 moves.
>2 Bishops = max  26 moves.
>9 Queen   = max 252 moves.   (9*28)
>1 King    = max   9 moves.
>----------------------------
>Bound     = max 333 moves.
>
>Of couse the pieces might interfere with each other making this bound way too
>loose.
>
>
>Best regards
>Flemming

A bishop can have at most 13 moves.
A Queen can have at most 13 + 14 = 27 moves.
A King can have at most 8 moves.

The maximum number of moves a position can have is believed to be well under
255. Unproven I believe. In any case, an extremely safe bet for a programmer
wishing to encode the moves of a game for a chess database program.



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