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Subject: Re: How Many Positions Are There?

Author: walter irvin

Date: 15:29:45 10/30/00

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On October 30, 2000 at 12:42:23, Uri Blass wrote:

>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
i would say you are 1000% right if it were not for one part of my statement i
said only positions that can be safely reached vs strong opposition .there are
tons of positions that are even that can not be reached vs strong opposition .



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