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Subject: Re: Always hope for humans?

Author: Heiner Marxen

Date: 09:04:43 02/16/00

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On February 15, 2000 at 18:36:19, Dan Ellwein wrote:

>On February 15, 2000 at 12:42:05, blass uri wrote:

[snip]
>>
>>No
>>Chess is 100% exact.
>>There are clear rules and every position has a clear result(a draw or a win for
>>white or a win for black) if both sides do not do mistakes.
>>
>>Uri
>
>maybe 'perfect chess' can be thought of in the same way as a 'perfect life'...
>
>both are full of 'endless possibilities'...


No, sorry, not "maybe", and not "endless".
There is a finite number of possible/legal positions.  That is not just
an opinion, but a hard fact.  In principle all positions can be enumerated.
If we had enough time and memory we could solve the 32-piece endgame
table and thus solve chess completely.

Practically, neither we humans nor our computers can cope with the
necessary amount of data (yet).  Therefore we handle chess as if it were
unbounded and endless, but thats just our fault (not the facts).

>here-in we experience the beauty of life and chess...

That's fine with me :-)

Heiner



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