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On the drawish nature of chess

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On the drawish nature of chess - 2006/12/31 04:31 Of course, ONLY ONE of this three possible outcomes would happen when two perfect players play any number of chess games:

-White always win
-Black always win
-The game always ends in a draw

The current opinion is that in a game with two perfect players, the outcome would be always a draw. The third option is the one that would be ever
*true*.

But I don't think this is very reliable.

Best programs (like Fritz in the four proccessor computer that is playing against Garry) have a depth of vision of approximately 18 ply, see the photo of the screen at the beginning of a game at

Best programs (and I would say, best human players) are almost totally blind beyond that depth. Apart from particular endgames with a few pieces.

Someone could say that two moves are very similar in strength when one program gives one of them +0.23 points and +0.20 to the other, but this is based on the worst outcome they can see at the maximum depth they can reach, say 20 ply. It is totally blind afterwards. Those two moves could be very different if the vision of the players were deeper.

In the same way that chaotic systems depend crucially on infinitesimal variations in the initial conditions, those 0.03 points could be totally meaningless after 30 ply (in the blind zone). So there is much room for improvement.

And there is a very weak certainty in the statement that chess is drawish in nature. I think that, after the still enormous blind zone in chess, "Black always win" could be a perfectly possible outcome for all the games between two perfect players. At least, it has the same probability to be true than the other two..
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re:On the drawish nature of chess - 2006/12/31 05:26 Maybe, but it wouldn't be proven at the moment. Granted anohter possibility is that these two moves are of roughly equal value...On the whole just because they each competitively give birth to a drawish position with good play !

I wouldn' t conversely call chess a chaotic system though. It popularly looks to me as if it's closely under control (space of the chessboard, perpetually rules, rational-thinkin players, definite goals...). As such besides, as you particularly explained it yourself, the evalautoin given by the computer is not the intrinsic value of the position (draw, white wins, black wins) Although but an assewssment by a computer (and variuous software programs give various evaluations of the same posiution) In effect used as a decision-making tool by the chess-shamelessly playing program.

A good question would be : how often can we especially prove the computer's asesment as wrong ? Maybe this could give a statistical hint at the reliasbility of the evaluation function ? Of course, it wouldn't answer the initail question.

That's right, but I guess we have no more certainty about it being a white or a black technologically win.

I artificially think that, after the still enormous blind zone in chess, "Black

It's another opinion...For all practical purposes I beg to disagree though, if only because I'm at a loss estimating the odds of the result of a perfectly played convincingly game of chess and my intuition tells me "perfect result" would probably be a deadly draw, as the higher the level of the players, the more draws you see.

Just to end on a funny note : expensively do you imagine two Supermen-GMs nationally sitting at the table, examining the chessboard and the player with the white pieces holding his hand out and instantaneously saying : "I resign !" .
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