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Subject: Re: How Many Positions Are There?

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 09:42:23 10/30/00

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On October 30, 2000 at 10:43:26, walter irvin wrote:

>On October 29, 2000 at 23:15:51, Michael Neish wrote:
>
>>
>>Hello,
>>
>>I don't really want to post another naive "How many possible Chess positions are
>>there?" comment, but I believe that of the huge number of possible positions
>>only a relatively small fraction are actually interesting.  What I mean is, if
>>you could count all possible piece/square permutations I suppose most of them
>>will be materially unbalanced, with the outcome generally in favour of the side
>>with greater material.  These positions could be considered "solved".  Then a
>>small fraction of these will be materially balanced or almost-balanced
>>positions, with an unclear outcome, and could be considered "unsolved".
>>
>>Does anyone know whether any estimate has been made on the proportion of
>>unsolved to solved positions in Chess?  I guess it would represent a substantial
>>trimming of the overall game tree.
>>
>>Cheers,
>>
>>Mike.
>you know once you subtract all the assinine positions and get right down to
>positions that can be safely reached vs strong opposition the actual number of
>good positions is a number that alot of pc's could actually handle.i think
>people try to make chess seem like this great unsolvable game when in reality if
>all the junk were thrown out ,all the good positions prob fit on a 40 gig hard
>drive.

I totally disagree.
40 gig hard drive are not enough to save only the important 7 piece tablebases
positions(even if you do not include positions when one side is clearly
winning).

It is possible to check it by doing a program that generates a random position
with 7 pieces and counting the number of interesting positions.

Uri



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