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Subject: Re: ==> game tree of perfect chess

Author: Vincent Diepeveen

Date: 07:58:11 01/08/03

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On January 08, 2003 at 09:33:04, S. Loinjak wrote:

>I'm not sure how the complete game theoretical tree of chess looks like but I've
>got the folowing ideas about it.

>From correspondence chess I know that high search depths (e.g 24 ply in middle
>game with still 20 men on the board) enable you to start optically very very
>risky looking attacks where the initiative gain can compensate a considerable
>amount of material over a long time.

that is however not near the theoretical number of board positions. in my own
games (i am FIDE master means >= 2300 FIDE : like 2500 USCF) i also can
sometimes make up for big material. However in perfect chess that is far more
complicated with exception of reaching strategical goals from opening. We do not
talk however about more than the material that's on the board. After a few
captures of course the number of positions go down bigtime.

the problem of the number of theoretic positions is that most positions are
possible with the entire set of pieces on the board, whereas the reality is that
you directly swap a pawn or so in most openings.

If you do not swap the pawns run against each other which limits the number of
possibilities also considerable.

10^43 which is last calculated number is not near the real truth simply.

there is so many nonsense positions reachable with a full board of pieces
whereas usually they stay on the same half of the board. My pieces on my side of
the board and the opponent his own. at the 4th and 5th rank usually both have
some material mixed and there is very little pieces of mine inside the opponent
positions.

That limits the number of possibilities by magnitudes already. Getting down from
10^43 to 10^38 is really a peanut with such rules which are never hard rules.

the difference between optimal chess and normal chess is very similar to each
other. The difference between normal chess and theoretic possible positions is
*completely* different.

>Therefor I 'feel' that optimal chess might be by far different from 'normal'
>human chess. Maybe it'll be full of extreme attacks like Nezhmetdinov used to
>play (the one who outcombined M. Tal in his [Tals!] best days - even Tal was
>proud of those losses). Of course the main variation could look very
>conventional and lifeless as maybe both colors are forced to act extremely
>prophylactically to avoid a 'perfect' attact.
>
>Therefor I could imagine (but I'm not sure about it) that there are lines in the
>perfect chess tree (containing the main variation(s) and at least one refutation
>[not necessarily the strongest one] for each suboptimal move) which are highly
>material imbalanced over a long time until mate or draw is forced.
>
>
>Sini



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