Author: Angrim
Date: 12:49:19 05/11/01
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On May 11, 2001 at 03:29:43, Dann Corbit wrote: >On May 11, 2001 at 01:49:03, Angrim wrote: <snip> >>If your goal is to determine how hard it is to solve chess, then yes. >>Rather then go into a lengthy rant here, let me give an example. >>The following position has pawns advanced a total of 4 squares, so >>subtract 4*50 from the max depth, and your math suggests that there are >>38^(5900 -200) total games of chess that can result from this position. >>However, the position is trivial. No need for sqrt(38^(5900 -200)) >>positions to be searched or stored... >> >>[D]rnbqkbnr/pppp1ppp/4p3/8/6P1/5P2/PPPPP2P/RNBQKBNR b KQkq g3 0 2 > >Yet there are many quintillions of quintillions of qintillions of games that can >sprout from here. > My point being that if your goal is to solve this position, then all but 1 of those games is totally irrelevant. >Unless we assume optimal play. We only need to assume optimal play for one side, unless chess turns out to be a draw. I'm not actually good enough at chess to determine whether or not the game is a theory draw :-) . >Positions like this one are intensely interesting, however. We could formally >trim all forward branches from here. Unless I am missing something. > >Which brings up another thought. What percentage of moves are so horrible that >they are not even worth considering. Is it 99.99999999999999999999999999%? not of moves, but of the set of all possible games, the percentage that contain an error of that magnitude is roughly 99.999<insert 2 pages of 9s>99% Even if you define such an error as "any move which can be shown to lose with a 1 second search" rather than the possibly unsound "any move which crafty would score as 10 points lower than the favorite after a 1 second search". Angrim ps. so much for my attempt to avoid a lengthy rant. But at least I left out the 2 pages of 9s ;)
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