Sanny wrote:
In Chess after every move new 30-40 moves are generated.



well Sanny, that might be correct, but many of these moves are tactical
mistakes, or give away material immediately. and with perfect play
the game in such a case is subsequently lost (excluding some deep
combinations, but these are recognized in 99.99999 % of the
cases by an engine as Rybka imho);

so in reality/practice, there are about 3-12 moves possible
for each side, in sharp play sometimes there's only one
correct move, in positional play/endgames there might
even be sometimes more moves possible than 12;
in any case its much less than the 3-40 you mention

So just in 10 depth we reached 590 Trillion Moves.


well it's less, see above, but it's not a smart way of generating
a database; if you generate a positional database (thats the
way modern opening books are made), because of
the many *transpositions*, the number of positions will
be mcu& *much* less.
In fact, if we exclude tactical mistakes, i believe it would
be possible to generate a database at 25 ply (12.5 moves)
deep with all possible correct/non losing moves.

Say Each Move Generation needs 1000 Calculations.

all this calculations can be done offline, and on other computers,
or by GM's; by loading in slow GM games from history i
already have used lots of knowledge/ human calcuation power..
\
And when using computers/engines, you forget a very important
element in speeding up the calculation, namely the socalled
*alfa/beta* algorithm. from what i vaguely remember
this speeds up the calculation process -to find the right move-
with about 50 times.
Not everybody seems to be aware of such methods, eg.
GM Kasparov in his book 'why chess looks like life',
claims that there are more positions in chess than
atoms in the univers. humbug, but Gary isn't an
astrophysicist, you know; he's a politician..


So to evaluate all moves upto 15 depth even on Fastest Supercomputer
that works at speed of Petaflop will take 5 Months.

i've been busy with computerchess about 15 years, and gradually
have been building up my database; while its'not perfect, i'm
certain that at least until about ply 25 no advantage for white
can be made, wheter you play Italian, 1.d4, or whatever.
In a later stage i thought that a minimal advantage with
the Ruy Lopez could be achieved, but with extensive
analysis with Rybka i've found some novelties and
now am convinced that black also can maintain a draw.

To Solve Chess we need to search till atleast 100 depth. That will
take even more than Billions of Billions of Billions of years
we don't have to fully analyze the game i think.
for every winning plan for white, i believe there
exists a proper defence system for black.
(there exist of course some simple games
where all possibilities *can* be calculated , and
it's proven with 100 % certainty they are a draw,
but indeed such a method does'nt seem
possible for chess, at least for some millennia)

example, although i'm not an expert in the
game of draughts (or checkers), from what i've
vaguely read/seen in some articles, the scientific/
computer games community seems to be
convinced these games are a draw, even although
they haven't fully calculated all possibilities;

well, i now am convinced the same hold for chess..

but if you disagree, well, than i challenge you just
like Ray Johnston -or others- to show me
a winning line for white; and then i guarantee
that i will find improvement(s) for black
which ensure the draw. Good luck..

best regards,
jef

jefk wrote:
Sanny wrote:
In Chess after every move new 30-40 moves are generated.

well Sanny, that might be correct, but many of these moves are
tactical mistakes, or give away material immediately. and with
perfect play the game in such a case is subsequently lost (excluding
some deep combinations, but these are recognized in 99.99999 % of
the cases by an engine as Rybka imho);

so in reality/practice, there are about 3-12 moves possible for each
side, in sharp play sometimes there's only one correct move, in
positional play/endgames there might even be sometimes more moves
possible than 12; in any case its much less than the 3-40 you
mention

You're begging the question. You can't know that all of those moves
are tactical mistakes until you've analyzed them fully. Now, if all
you're interested in is playing *good* chess, it's acceptable to have
a quick look at these moves and throw them away if they don't come
good within a few ply. However, if you want to play *perfect* chess,
you have to look at absolutely everything. It might just be that the
winning strategy for White involves a queen sacrifice on move five
that doesn't pay off until move 100. Staggeringly unlikely but still
possible.

To Solve Chess we need to search till atleast 100 depth. That will
take even more than Billions of Billions of Billions of years

we don't have to fully analyze the game i think.

You can't *solve* chess without fully anazlyzing it.

for every winning plan for white, i believe there exists a proper
defence system for black.

For a *winning* plan for white there is, by definition, no proper
defence. If there were a proper defence, the plan wouldn't be
winning!

(there exist of course some simple games where all possibilities
*can* be calculated , and it's proven with 100 % certainty they are
a draw, but indeed such a method does'nt seem possible for chess, at
least for some millennia)

Agreed.

example, although i'm not an expert in the game of draughts (or
checkers), from what i've vaguely read/seen in some articles, the
scientific/ computer games community seems to be convinced these
games are a draw, even although they haven't fully calculated all
possibilities;

Schaeffer et al have fully solved checkers.


Dave.

--
David Richerby Confusing Cheese Cat (TM): it's like
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ a cat that's made of cheese but you
can't understand it!

David Richerby wrote:

You can't *solve* chess without fully anazlyzing it.
...

Schaeffer et al have fully solved checkers.



These two statements are inconsistent with each other.


--
Kenneth Sloan
Computer and Information Sciences +1-205-932-2213
University of Alabama at Birmingham FAX +1-205-934-5473
Birmingham, AL 35294-1170 http://KennethRSloan.com/

In message , jefk
writes
Sanny wrote:
In Chess after every move new 30-40 moves are generated.

well Sanny, that might be correct, but many of these moves are tactical
mistakes, or give away material immediately. and with perfect play
the game in such a case is subsequently lost (excluding some deep
combinations, but these are recognized in 99.99999 % of the
cases by an engine as Rybka imho);

Actually Rybka is fantastically strong at beating other engines, but
deprived of its opening book I would not trust it navigate the
intricacies of some openings without guidance from a human. Shredder and
HIARCS seem to do better in this respect in the opening without a book.

so in reality/practice, there are about 3-12 moves possible
for each side, in sharp play sometimes there's only one
correct move, in positional play/endgames there might
even be sometimes more moves possible than 12;
in any case its much less than the 3-40 you mention

Even if we are very optimistic and allow for a 2x branching factor for
each successive ply the best engines on consumer hardware can still only
reach 24ply in a few days or 30ply in 1 year. Starting from the initial
position that is not even out of the stronger databases for opening
books.

So just in 10 depth we reached 590 Trillion Moves.


well it's less, see above, but it's not a smart way of generating
a database; if you generate a positional database (thats the
way modern opening books are made), because of
the many *transpositions*, the number of positions will
be mcu& *much* less.
In fact, if we exclude tactical mistakes, i believe it would
be possible to generate a database at 25 ply (12.5 moves)
deep with all possible correct/non losing moves.

The trouble is here that you cannot be certain that the perfect winning
line for white doesn't look at some stage like being a pawn down with no
prospect of compensation until the actual mating trap.

Who is to say that the perfect forced winning line for white does start
with something completely absurd like: 1. h3
Only when we have a full depth search result can we be sure.

Say Each Move Generation needs 1000 Calculations.

all this calculations can be done offline, and on other computers,
or by GM's; by loading in slow GM games from history i
already have used lots of knowledge/ human calcuation power..
\
And when using computers/engines, you forget a very important
element in speeding up the calculation, namely the socalled
*alfa/beta* algorithm. from what i vaguely remember
this speeds up the calculation process -to find the right move-
with about 50 times.

Roughly as square root of the number of terminal nodes if the tree was
perfectly ordered and somewhat more effort if not. Then razoring (which
is iffy for formal proof) and killer move heuristics get another order
of magnitude.

Not everybody seems to be aware of such methods, eg.
GM Kasparov in his book 'why chess looks like life',
claims that there are more positions in chess than
atoms in the univers. humbug, but Gary isn't an
astrophysicist, you know; he's a politician..

But that is correct. There are.

So to evaluate all moves upto 15 depth even on Fastest Supercomputer
that works at speed of Petaflop will take 5 Months.

i've been busy with computerchess about 15 years, and gradually
have been building up my database; while its'not perfect, i'm
certain that at least until about ply 25 no advantage for white
can be made, wheter you play Italian, 1.d4, or whatever.
In a later stage i thought that a minimal advantage with
the Ruy Lopez could be achieved, but with extensive
analysis with Rybka i've found some novelties and
now am convinced that black also can maintain a draw.

Rybka tends to have a very flat evaluation of the initial opening phase
of the game. Shredder and HIARCS tend to see more of the structure
albeit in a slightly exaggerated way.

To Solve Chess we need to search till atleast 100 depth. That will
take even more than Billions of Billions of Billions of years

we don't have to fully analyze the game i think.
for every winning plan for white, i believe there
exists a proper defence system for black.
(there exist of course some simple games
where all possibilities *can* be calculated , and
it's proven with 100 % certainty they are a draw,
but indeed such a method does'nt seem
possible for chess, at least for some millennia)

The number of positions that needs to be considered is still far beyond
anything that a conventional computer can do now or in the future. If
someone gets a quantum computer to run a chess program all bets are off,
but until that day the best we can say is that it might be a draw.

example, although i'm not an expert in the
game of draughts (or checkers), from what i've
vaguely read/seen in some articles, the scientific/
computer games community seems to be
convinced these games are a draw, even although
they haven't fully calculated all possibilities;

I think you will find they have a formal proof for draughts/checkers
now.
http://chinook.cs.ualberta.ca/users/chinook/index.html

well, i now am convinced the same hold for chess..

It is plausible, but it could equally be a first player win.

but if you disagree, well, than i challenge you just
like Ray Johnston -or others- to show me
a winning line for white; and then i guarantee
that i will find improvement(s) for black
which ensure the draw. Good luck..

Cataloguing the opening tree within 50cp of equality might make an
interesting net distributed computational project.

Regards,
--
Martin Brown

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Martin Brown wrote:
Actually Rybka is fantastically strong at beating other engines, but
deprived of its opening book I would not trust it navigate the
intricacies of some openings without guidance from a human. Shredder
and HIARCS seem to do better in this respect in the opening without a
book.
yes, Rybka, tends to choose strange moves like 1.Nc3, or Nc6 after d4 d5
Nf3,
but the programmer could improve this later of course


Who is to say that the perfect forced winning line for white does
start with something completely absurd like: 1. h3
1. a3 looks better to me
Only when we have a full depth search result can we be sure.
nope, same with checkers, they didnt use a full depth search

claims that there are more positions in chess than atoms in the
univers.
But that is correct. There are.
nah atoms, who cares, i claim there are more quarks
in the universe, than there are possible 'real' (originating
from legal moves) positions in chess..

'Proof': well, try to prove its not true,
otherwise i hold my claim

Rybka tends to have a very flat evaluation of the initial opening
phase of the game.
yes, but most importantly, the initial 'advantage' of white can not
be increased during the stage of opening theory.
on the contrary, with perfect play black will gradually
achieve an equal game
Shredder and HIARCS tend to see more of the structure albeit in a
slightly exaggerated way.
yes, but also in this case black can compensate the white initiative
To Solve Chess we need to search till atleast 100 depth.
that's *your* opinion, but with the endgame table bases
already a lot of endgame moves will be accounted for

Cataloguing the opening tree within 50cp of equality might make an
interesting net distributed computational project.
there seems to exist a project in this direction,
but lately unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much progress:
http://www.chessbrain.net/

regards,
jef

Martin Brown wrote:
Roughly as square root of the number of terminal nodes if the tree
was perfectly ordered and somewhat more effort if not. Then razoring
(which is iffy for formal proof) and killer move heuristics get
another order of magnitude.

Killer move can't get an order of magnitude over perfect ordering --
KM is just a heuristic to get better ordering. But, yes, if you don't
already have perfect ordering, KM will help a lot.

well, i now am convinced the same hold for chess..
It is plausible, but it could equally be a first player win.

Or even a second-player win. I think it's Suba and/or Watson who
argues that Black has the win because White has to reveal his hand
first, so to speak.


Dave.

--
David Richerby Gigantic Pointy-Haired Smokes (TM):
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ it's like a pack of cigarettes that's
completely clueless but it's huge!

jefk wrote:
yes, but most importantly, the initial 'advantage' of white can not
be increased during the stage of opening theory. on the contrary,
with perfect play black will gradually achieve an equal game

Objection. The witness is speculating.


Dave.

--
David Richerby Natural Impossible Goldfish (TM):
www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~davidr/ it's like a fish but it can't exist
and it's completely natural!

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8Bit


Martin Brown wrote:

The number of positions that needs to be considered is still far beyond
anything that a conventional computer can do now or in the future. If
someone gets a quantum computer to run a chess program all bets are off,
but until that day the best we can say is that it might be a draw.

IBM has a 7-Qbit Quantum Computer that uses Shor’s algorithm to
factor the number 15 into 3 and 5. D-Wave Systems claims to have
a working 28-Qbit Quantum Computer, but I have my doubts. Quantum
computers are hard to scale up. There are problems keeping the
Qbits stable long enough to finish the calculation, and as you
add more qubits, the problem gets worse. So we aren't there yet
and may never get there.

--
Guy Macon
http://www.guymacon.com/

On Feb 5, 10:41 pm, Guy Macon http://www.guymacon.com/ wrote:
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8Bit

Martin Brown wrote:
The number of positions that needs to be considered is still far beyond
anything that a conventional computer can do now or in the future. If
someone gets a quantum computer to run achessprogram all bets are off,
but until that day the best we can say is that it might be a draw.

IBM has a 7-Qbit Quantum Computer that uses Shor's algorithm to
factor the number 15 into 3 and 5. D-Wave Systems claims to have
a working 28-Qbit Quantum Computer, but I have my doubts. Quantum
computers are hard to scale up. There are problems keeping the
Qbits stable long enough to finish the calculation, and as you
add more qubits, the problem gets worse. So we aren't there yet
and may never get there.

--
Guy Macon
http://www.guymacon.com/

How these Quantum Computer work and how we will program them. I
suppose it is a Parralel Computer?

Bye
Sanny

Play Chess at: http://www.GetClub.com/Chess.html

In article ,
David Richerby wrote:
jefk wrote:
yes, but most importantly, the initial 'advantage' of white can not
be increased during the stage of opening theory. on the contrary,
with perfect play black will gradually achieve an equal game
Objection. The witness is speculating.

Stronger objection. He is plain wrong. With perfect play,
(a) if chess is a draw then White has no initial advantage at all,
and Black already has an equal game; or
(b) if chess is a White win, then no play by Black can change that
[assuming that "perfect play" applies to both sides]; or
(c) if chess is [surprisingly] a Black win, then no play by White
can change that, and Black has a better-than-equal game.

--
Andy Walker
Nottingham