Compare it to the 7-men db. That's how god is playing. I doubt that SF will find the mate in 500...
A position can only be won or drawn. Basically SF knows little about most positions.
@Sarg0n said in #31:
> Compare it to the 7-men db. That's how god is playing. I doubt that SF will find the mate in 500...
> A position can only be won or drawn. Basically SF knows little about most positions.
Seems like you are talking to OP.
Well, did you read in-between posts?
I was talking about whether chess is draw with perfect play or not.
Though it's been debatable since decades, I would like to know your point of view.
Why do people think chess will be ruined if it ever gets "solved" by an engine? Do the people who believe this think that they will be able to learn from the engine and also "solve" chess because I don't see that happening. Opinions?
@userfriendly2 said in #33:
> Why do people think chess will be ruined if it ever gets "solved" by an engine? Do the people who believe this think that they will be able to learn from the engine and also "solve" chess because I don't see that happening. Opinions?
Don't know what goes in mind of those nonsense people.
It would never be ruined.
Chess was and will remain as most interesting sport ever.
Also by the time it gets solved, none of us would be alive by then!
even if solved. we still would have the fog in game. it would just maybe mean more tools for teaching and testable methods to experience navigation..... would not have to commit whole life to get to nowadays top players experience levels, yet there would still be fine grain fractal boundaries on our internal maps of patterns to explore for tournament purposes (last bit is a hunch).
Edit: actually depens on what solved mean in the minds of people. I think there is that belief that it mean a long forcing sequence to some best outcome (some believing mate, other draw). That it means a singleton path.
while aside from 50 move rule tournament physical constraint (and people administering), there is nothing in chess that should tell you how thick perfect chess should be. It may be draw, so who cares, still a weeding ground for tournament fans (just need more games, or re-thing the tier structure and mixing conditions, and update clocks).
would not change a thing. I do hope it is wide or that we play an extension that makes memorizing a thin long bundle of sequences a non human project still for all the initial conditions (am I thinking some better 960?)
Also, suppose there was only one path. Would being good at memorizing it be enough to guarantee the best outcome? A good player otherwise trained might be better at responding to any position (like in TB, how many entry points are the perfect continuation of the standard initial position), and just decide to do a "mistake" on purpose. Then the memorizer would have to learn also how to deal with that, and so on outside of perfect chess (as assumed). I don't think there would be that much of a difference. just different opening data going further.
it may take as long a sequence to store in memory to "refute" the mistake as having the "main line" in storage. I made a false dichotomy of player learning style, but the take home is human brain limitations.
Yeah. I defined solve as one forced sequence of moves, completely perfect, that will be played by all strong engines with the same strength, a concrete solution to the game of chess, whether a draw or win for White, not as a "soft solve".
Stockfish is 15 now, it needs to learn to drive and graduate before going to college. I'd say let's give it a decade more.
Is Tablebase solve soft? Seems to me that unless the unique hard solve is a draw or mate outside of TB entry points, it ought be have some path within it. And it seems to me that TB has solved more positions perfect chess continuations than the unique entry point that would be part of hard solve.
I guess SF without TB has no clue.
Try this:
This is an example of a non-obvious zugzwang. Black to move loses by force yet White to move cannot win.
lichess.org/editor/8/3B4/6r1/8/1K6/8/3R4/k7 b - - 0 1
@continuum12 said in #19:
> It's interesting how everyone understands "perfect play" differently. As chessplayers we learn to think creatively as well as logically; however, I think perfect play does have to be absolutely perfect, and therefore requires "solving chess".
>
> Also, can one even solve chess? That on its own is interesting.
My response (without reading the rest of the thread) is that solving chess requires the unbelievably huge amount of moves that are irrelevant to perfect play. In perfect play, you merely need to play the moves which make sure you get the optimal result. If e4 can never be beaten and always gets a draw (assuming chess is drawn), you have perfect play. You can't prove perfect play without a hard solve, but it will be obvious when it happens.
