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

Author: Peter Berger

Date: 14:13:10 11/03/02

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On November 03, 2002 at 08:17:03, Omid David wrote:

>On November 03, 2002 at 07:12:24, Peter Berger wrote:
>
>>On November 03, 2002 at 05:20:31, Omid David wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>The game of chess can never ever be solved:
>>>
>>>There are about 10^128 potential chess positions. If we start searching with a
>>>supercomputer with the speed of 100 million nodes per second (10^8 NPS), it will
>>>take about 10^113 years to process all possible positions! What is the speed you
>>>can imagine in the next 100 years? Let's say 100 million million nodes per
>>>second (10^14 NPS); then it will take "only" 10^107 years to solve the game of
>>>chess!
>>>
>>>And even if we process all 10^128 possible positions, we will have one little
>>>problem: where to store the data?! Even if we manage to store a position in an
>>>atom, there won't be enough atoms for that, since there are "only" 10^80 atoms
>>>in the entire universe...!
>>
>>Unless the starting position is say a forced mate in 35 - then it will be solved
>>sooner or later.
>
>Let's say there is a forced mate in 35 (of course there isn't), how much will it
>take for a brute-force searcher to reach 35 plies?!

Why do you ask rhetorical questions ;) ?

In earnest - although it is 70 plies I would expect that it will doable some day
although not necessarily by brute-force search. Think of proof-number-search for
example and the deep mates it can prove ..



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