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Subject: Re: The total number of possible chess positions? WT

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 15:03:55 08/31/00

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On August 31, 2000 at 17:31:32, Dan Andersson wrote:

>A simple metodology. The simple statistical model hurts my mathematical
>instincts, as well as my knowledge. 'Keep it as simple as possible but no
>simpler.'

The model is simple.

The only problem is to construct the set of psuado legal positions not to be so
big.

My counting program calculated the number of possible positions for every
possible material configuration and calculated the number of possible pseudo
legal positions in every structure.

Choosing a random pseudo legal position if you want equal probability for all
the psuado-legal positions should be done by the following steps.
1)Choosing a random number of pseudo legal position.
2)Calculating the material configuration.
3)Calculating the exact position in the material configuration based on the
number.

It is possible that only considering material configuration is not enough and we
need to reduce the size of the set of the pseudo legal positions.

I have ideas how to do it(considering also some knowledge about the pawn
structure and not only knowledge about the material condiguration) but in this
case calculating the number of pseudo legal positions can be a more complicated
task for the computer and it may need more time to do it or to choose random
pseudo legal position.

My Mathematical instincts say that the problem is solvable and that we can get a
number that will be almost the exact number of legal positions when we can be
sure with 95% confidence that the error is not more than 10% if we work hard
about the problem.

Uri



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