Author: J. Wesley Cleveland
Date: 10:44:08 05/20/99
Go up one level in this thread
On May 19, 1999 at 19:24:48, Dann Corbit wrote: >On May 19, 1999 at 18:47:25, Brett Clark wrote: > >>There are more possible moves in a chess game than there are molecules in the >>universe. For that reason, I don't think that we'll ever see a computer play >>"1. e4, mate in 50". >That may be an overestimate. There are (according to some sources) only 10^52 >possible chess board positions [You don't need to know all the moves if you know >all the positions -- transpositions are unimportant]. There are (according to >other sources) about 10^82 elementary particles in the observable universe. It >would be a bit strange if the average molecule had 10^30 particles in it. > >OTOH, I suspect you are right about "1. e4, mate in 50" being a long way off. > >I think that we should always be careful to say what is impossible or possible. >There are sometimes new ways of looking at things. The thread about representing positions in the minimum number of bits is also about setting an upper bound on the maximum number of chess positions. 160 bits is 2^160 or ~= 10^48.
This page took 0.01 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.