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Subject: When Chess Will Be Fully Crunched Out

Author: Graham Laight

Date: 05:14:26 05/10/01

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On May 10, 2001 at 08:01:16, Graham Laight wrote:

>On May 10, 2001 at 05:46:24, Jesper Antonsson wrote:
>>Great, then, hopefully, this is *the* point where we disagree. Now, the 3-fold
>>repetition rule and 50-move rule are not mandatory, but they are there. How do
>>you handle these positions in the search in Crafty (your "algorithm")? I would
>>assume that you label them a draw and search no deeper. Perhaps you do not
>>always *claim* the draw when such a position is at the root, but, as I said, you
>>probably treat them as draws in the search. This is because mini-max "assumes"
>>best play from both sides, and either the position is a draw whether 3/50 rules
>>are used or not, in which case it is safe to return draw-score, or the player
>>that is losing, using "best play", should claim the draw, in which case minimax
>>should also return a draw score.
>>
>>So, from a search perspective, or solving-chess-perspective, we should treat
>>these positions as draws, and when we do, a "good" chess algorithm in theory
>>stops it's exponential behaviour at a certain depth.
>
>
>Given the application of the 50 move rule, one can easily estimate an absolute
>limit to the number of possible chess games.
>
>Number of pieces which can be taken: 30
>Number of possible pawn pushes: 6 * 16 = 96
>Total number of 50 move rule avoidence events: 96 + 30 = 126
>Maximum possible number of moves: 126 * 49 = 6,174
>Maximum possible number of plies: 6,174 * 2 = 12,348

This also allows us to estimate when chess will be fully solved (all possible
chess games generated).

Max possible plies in a chess game: 12,348
Number of years per increase of 1 in search ply depth: 3 (just a guess, I admit)
Number of years to wait: 3 * 12,348 = 37,044
Actual year: 37,044 - 2001 = 35,043

This is, of course, assuming that Moore's law continues to hold (which is not a
safe assumption based on only 35 years of history).

-g

>Average number of possible moves per position: 37 (you could work with a maximum
>possible if you prefer)
>Maximum possible number of games: 37 ^ 12,248
>= 1.4 e+19,364
>
>-g



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