Author: Uri Blass
Date: 03:48:12 10/02/01
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On October 01, 2001 at 18:21:09, Dann Corbit wrote: >On October 01, 2001 at 18:11:10, robert flesher wrote: > >>It has been calculated that the four opening moves can be made in 197,299 ways, >>leading to some 72,000 different positions. The approximate numbers of different >>games possible is 25x10 to the power of 116. a number astronomically higher that >>the number of atmos in the observable universe. This Quote was directly taken >>from Guiness book of world records 1976 edition. WOW and this is why chess is so >>damn hard. :) > >Unfortunately, they don't know what they are talking about. >There are 197,281 different ways to make the 4 opening moves. >There are 99,270 distinct positions at ply 4 (including e.p vulnerability). >The other numbers are equally suspect. >This has some interesting information: >http://www.clark.net/pub/pribut/chessfaq.html >Though the actual length of the longest possible game may be open to a bit of >debate. I have seen slightly different figures given elsewhere. For some reason I get an error message when I try to reply to andreas He said that his program get different information He is wrong at least for 197,281. His program does not give the number of ways to play 4 plies but the number of way to play at most 4 plies. If you substract the number of ways to play at most 3 plies from the number of ways to play at most 4 plies you get exactly 197,281 by his program. Uri
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