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Subject: Re: The game of chess can never ever be solved.

Author: Omid David

Date: 07:05:25 11/03/02

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On November 03, 2002 at 09:30:59, Sune Fischer wrote:

>On November 03, 2002 at 09:16:39, Omid David wrote:
>
>>On November 03, 2002 at 09:00:59, Uri Blass wrote:
>>
>>>On November 03, 2002 at 08:41:28, Omid David wrote:
>>>
>>>>On November 03, 2002 at 08:27:42, Joachim Rang wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On November 03, 2002 at 07:37:26, Uri Blass wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>I believe that chess can be practically solved.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I believe that you do not need to prove the result in order to get a draw in
>>>>>>every game.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I do not expect it to happen in the near future but I believe that in 2050 every
>>>>>>comp-comp game between top programs in chess is going to be finished in a draw.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Uri
>>>>>
>>>>>well that are concrete bets. Maybe you're right, but I hope not.
>>>>
>>>>Percentage of draws between top grandmaters has always been on an increasing
>>>>course. Nowadays 2 out of 3 games are ended in a draw. It is natural then, to
>>>>predict that in 50 or 100 years something like 4 out of 5 games will end in a
>>>>draw, and it could very well happen that in a little over a century almost all
>>>>the games between top grandmasters end in a draw. But that will not mean that
>>>>the game is solved, since the draw is the result of strength and knowledge of
>>>>the two players, not because they *know* what to play to reach a draw.
>>>>
>>>>You can call a game "solved", if everyone can learn what to do in a short time,
>>>>and will then, play the optimal moves forever (like tic-tac-toe). For computers,
>>>>"solved" will mean that they have a database or heuristic to determine the
>>>>optimal move at every position. For example, Shaeffer and his research group at
>>>>the University of Alberta are close to "solving" the game of checkers, in form
>>>>of having a database of win/lose/draw for every possible position.
>>>>
>>>>And according to this definition, the game of chess can NEVER EVER be solved.
>>>
>>>If programs always play the best move thanks to search and evaluation then
>>>The result is the same as the result that they do it thanks to database.
>>>
>>
>>Correct, but the problem is that a program can never play the best move without
>>such a database!
>
>Sure it can, it can find the solution at runtime by search.
>

Yes, but here we are talking about a problem that cannot be solved by runtime
search. With a branching factor of 4, in order to reach the depth of 40 plies
alone, you have to search about 10^24 positions. If you have a processor with
the speed of 100 trillion (100 million million) nodes per second (10^14 NPS), it
will take 10^10 seconds, or more than 300 years...!


>Why would it need to be stored in a file on disk for it to be solved?
>My pocket calculator does not have table of all multiplications and additions
>hardcoded in ROM, it simply has an algorithm to answer the question at runtime
>:)
>
>-S.
>
>>>I am also not sure that the game can never be solved by some database.
>>>There can be a rule for classes of positions and not for a single position so it
>>>is possible to have database that may give a move for every position and the
>>>size of the database may be smaller than the number of the possible positions.
>>>
>>
>>But still the database will be extremely large. Let's say you come up with a
>>database of _only_ 10^30 needed positions. Where will you store it?!
>>
>>
>>>Uri



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