Author: James T. Walker
Date: 04:54:38 02/20/00
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On February 20, 2000 at 06:07:46, blass uri wrote: >On February 19, 2000 at 23:12:04, Michael Fuhrmann wrote: > >>In the Gulko piece in Commentary magazine cited here recently, Gulko says: >> >>"It has been established that the total number of possible chess games which can >>develop from the starting position on the board not only exceeds the number of >>atoms in the known universe, but does so by a wide margin." >> >>Has this in fact been "established" or is this overstatement? > >It is a clearly correct statement. > >I think that the total number of games is more than 10^1000 >because the number of games of 1000 moves is probably more than 10^1000 > >The number of legal positions is another question >because it is less than 10^48. > >Uri I also read the above statement years ago but the number given was something more reasonable like 10^127 for possible number of games. But I also believe some assumptions had to be made about the games. I also think the number of atoms in the known universe is only about 10^78 or something like that. All this from my failing memory so maybe someone can give the correct figures. Jim Walker
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