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Subject: Re: How Many Positions Are There?

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 15:52:19 10/30/00

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On October 30, 2000 at 18:29:45, walter irvin wrote:

>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 .

I do not think that there are a lot of even positions with only 7 pieces that
cannot be reached vs strong opposition.

I believe that 40 Gbytes are not enough to save all the possible positions that
can be reached vs strong opposition and they are even not enough to save all the
7 piece positions that can be reached.

Uri



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