Chess interations.

[Zacariaz]

I don't recall if I've described this thought of mine on this forum yet, but I think not, and being both sick and bored, and thus unable to entertain myself at the moment, I might as well hear your response to it. Mind you, it's not any less useless than the concept of Watson.

In my opinion, and I'm quite sure I'm right, there's no such thing as a game of chess that goes on forever, even if we disregard the fact that the the official rules, at least as far as I'm aware, makes sure of this. This is of course due to the fact that, at some point, the state of the board will return to a state previously seen in that particular game. Of course different choices may be made in such an event, continuing the game on a different course, but in the end, repetition is bound to occur, in which case I dare call it a tie.

This poses a number of interesting questions.

1. Will it be possible, with today's technology, to write a program to iterate through all possible chess games from start to end? (and how long would it take? )

I've pretty much made up my mind how I'd do it, but I've also come to the realisation that I won't be the one to do it as I'm not nearly talented enough. It's a pity really, as this is just up my alley, though of course I realise that I'm unlikely to get hold on the processing power needed any time soon, I'd really like to at least prove the technique, but that's life for you.

2. Is their such a thing as a perfect game? That is a game where, from the start, you can guarantee the outcome to be a winning scenario or at least a non losing scenario.

This is a somewhat harder question, but I guess that in the end it's all about if there is a path through the iterations where the opponent can not prevent a win or a tie as long as the the right choices are made by just the one player. One thing is certain though. If there is such thing as a certain win, white will be the one to hold it. If the answer is a tie, it probably goes both ways.


As always I'll be looking forward to reading your insights and also, should anyone feel a need for it, I do apologize for this continuous stream of unpleasant insights into the uncharted depths of my mind. I really can't help it


Best regards.

Ps.

Just wanted to mention that I've seriously considered taking the same approach to Reversi instead, which should be a lot easier, so any comments on that are of course welcome. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it has been done before, at least I know that there is a pretty good estimation of how many different games are possible, but it could still be fun to do.

[Kevin]

Writing the program of 1. shouldn't be too hard to do. After all, all you need is to recursively try out all possible moves. Of course, running it and getting a result is much harder, as both memory size and your life time are limited. But given a Turing Machine and infinite time - why not?

I'm not sure if 2. has been answered, but at least afaik no winning strategy is known.

[Zacariaz]

Writing the program of 1. shouldn't be too hard to do. After all, all you need is to recursively try out all possible moves. Of course, running it and getting a result is much harder, as both memory size and your life time are limited. But given a Turing Machine and infinite time - why not?

I'm not sure if 2. has been answered, but at least afaik no winning strategy is known.

Just iterating through it all shouldn't be too hard in theory no, but as you need to keep track of it all draw any conclusions other than the possible number of games, I'm a bit more concerned.

[Solar]

Will it be possible, with today's technology, to write a program to iterate through all possible chess games from start to end?

Of course.

(and how long would it take? )

I wouldn't worry about the runtime (after all, we don't know how fast computers will yet become), but the memory requirement to store information about them is ridiculous. The number of possible chess diagrams ("positions") "is estimated to be between 10^43 and 10^47" (Wikipedia). There are roughly 10^50 atoms in the planet earth...

[Zacariaz]

Will it be possible, with today's technology, to write a program to iterate through all possible chess games from start to end?

Of course.

(and how long would it take? )

I wouldn't worry about the runtime (after all, we don't know how fast computers will yet become), but the memory requirement to store information about them is ridiculous. The number of possible chess diagrams ("positions") "is estimated to be between 10^43 and 10^47" (Wikipedia). There are roughly 10^50 atoms in the planet earth...

Good point there, however, how is this number, 10^(43-47) reached? Can we be sure that this estimation is anywhere near the real number or is it more like an upper limit?

[Solar]

As far as I understood, it's a provable upper limit.

If you're really interested in it, why don't you check out for yourself? I got all I know about chess statistics in the last couple of minutes from starting here and then following the source links to e.g. here and here.

[Zacariaz]

As far as I understood, it's a provable upper limit.

If you're really interested in it, why don't you check out for yourself? I got all I know about chess statistics in the last couple of minutes from starting here and then following the source links to e.g. here and here.

You wouldn't believe how much I've read about exactly this subject the last year or two (though I don't recognise the Second link)

Mostly I just think it's an interesting subject of conversation.