In message
,
pialogue writes
First off, the "Sanny/ttk5" exchange appears to be SPAMBOT based and
off-topic. Is there any way to delete those messages or at least ban
Sanny from posting here?

It is a public newsgroup anyone can post here. I find the constant
bitching about alleged USCF misdeeds far more annoying than Sanny YMMV

Thank you VERY much for introducing me to the concept of "zugzwang" as
I had never previously considered the possibility that chess was an
inherently flawed game from the very beginning.

Same with opening theory. Every now and then someone comes up with a new
approach that for a while breaks the previous conventional wisdom.
Finding novelty prepared traps in openings is now key to winning in the
big engine vs engine matches. Offline taking days the engine can prepare
deep lines for the opening book that target known weaknesses in its
opponent (or more accurately believed to be known weaknesses). Typically
this preparation has to be guided by human intervention (at least so
far).

I also get the feeling from the responses above as well as those sent
to me privately that the concept of "perfect" is relative depending
upon a person's personal opinion or frame of perspective. In other

I don't think that at all. If the game is won for white then there is at
least one perfect game where no matter what black does white can force a
win. The trouble is that you may have to explore the entire full depth
of the game tree to prove it.

In real OTB chess games there is an element of bluff and counter bluff.
Some good moves are weaker than perfect but invite an opponent to make a
plausible looking mistake. But a perfect opponent would not be so
distracted by such tricks. Humans are though. Putting a piece down hard
sometimes gives added gravitas to an otherwise ordinary move.

words, in my opinion, there are so many different possibilities for
very good plays in the opening and middle games such that the only
real "perfect" result would be the game ending in a draw period. A
perfect game of defense for black would be to counter or block white's
initial theoretical advantage and black's ability to lure white off of
a previously-planned successful path.

In real play yes, but in game theory the final outcome of a
deterministic game like chess with perfect play is one of win, draw or
lose for white. We just don't know which one it is.

Now obviously I am talking about a perfect game by BOTH players. A
perfect game for either side obviously results in a win and I agree
that a good endgame database, very soon to be a "totalgame" database,
is essential.

Endgame databases attack the problem from the other end. They are
complete and exact and show the number of moves to every final game
state from any given position on the board using up to N=6 men. The
number of states and the size of the database grows alarmingly fast with
N. You can probe these online to see how it works at:

http://www.k4it.de/index.php?topic=egtb&lang=en

You can extend this back a to around 8 men with tools like Freezer
(although its interface takes some getting used to). Freezer souped up a
bit on a 64bit architecture might be OK for some 9 men problems.

Beyond that the sheer size of the databases and the computational effort
to make them means only special cases are ever likely to be studied in
depth.

Regards,
--
Martin Brown

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

Martin Brown wrote
I don't think that at all. If the game is won for white then there is
at least one perfect game where no matter what black does white can
force a win.
theoretical possible, but highly unlikely, if not completely impossible


In real play yes, but in game theory the final outcome of a
deterministic game like chess with perfect play is one of win, draw or
lose for white. We just don't know which one it is.

well after some comprehensive analysis with Ryba i
now strongly suspect it's a draw..

so computer chess games probably will become boring in future,
eg. Hydra vs Rybka, if Rybka would play on a strong multicpu,
than the outcome should be a draw.
so you could indeed say that normal chess is 'dead' as
the late R.J. Fischer claimed, probably also to
promote his random Fischer (or 360) chess;
maybe in computer chess it also would be interesting
to abolish the 50 move draw rule, as with the 6,
and later 7 man endgame bases we could get
interesting results (?); also in random/shuffle chess.

best regards
jef
http://superchess.blogspot.com