There are more possible games of chess than the number of atoms in the observable universe. I find that unexpected.
>>1708858390% of those possible games involve various permutations of the same handful of moves as well as infinite cycling for a billion turns before deciding to deviate after cycle #1,009,764,271
>>17088586>infinite cycling if the board state of a game of chess happens 3 times in a game of chess, no matter how far apart, the game immediately ends as a draw.still, it's true that the vast majority of possible chess game states are not at all similar to someone trying to play and is more akin to someone using a chess board as a really crappy abacus
>>17088600Ackchually, the 3-fold rule requires a player to declare the draw as per official tournament rules. Though online platforms will impose it without requiring declaration. But yeah, I was honestly exaggerating to highlight the real point that most of the possible game states are not plausible for real people playing chess.
>>17088583>>17088586Yeah but only like a billionth of a billionth of a percent of those are actually reasonable games where the player is actually making moves that advance an objective and not just making completely random and retarded moves.
>>17088608If you aren't using either 3-fold repetition or the 50 move rule there are trivially an infinite number of chess games which I don't think is what they're going for with this thread.Like yeah, infinity is more than the atoms in the universe no shit a game where you say "penis" over and over until you decide to stop and your score is how many times you say penis also has more potential game states than the number of atoms in the universe because you can just say penis forever
interesting, i didn't think before about how many meaningful, plausible games there are. indeed these astronomical calculations are almost all meaningless random shit that is not interesting in any way. the set of meaningful games must be a vanishingly small fraction of these. it may be already reasonably exploredbut i guess it's not so easy to define what's meaningful. game-theoretically it would be just one perfect game, likely leading to a draw
>>17088639You can use the Maia chess engine that simulates human moves and make estimates from there. You can eliminate moves that sub-1,000 ELO humans would play, since they’re basically worse than amateur and shouldn’t be considered. It would be silly to brute force the whole calculation but you could get a feel of the trend after 3 moves or so, analyzing positions in the opening, middlegame, and endgame from various games.
>>17088586cycled states imply the game is inconsistent and gay
>>17088583chess is such a gay game>knight to take your pawn>haha just as i expected! now my thingy takes your knight!>wtf i literally examined every piece on the board and there was no way you could have taken my knight>fine, let me check every piece you have and every possible way you could move your pieces... uhhh i move this guy over there>haha bad move again retard! now my thingy takes your queen!such a gay ass game. humiliation ritual game. sorry i havent played 600,000 games of chess before
>Magnus plays the bongcloud attack against you What do?
Like a game of poker. A good game happens rarely.
>>17088627>you can just say penis foreverproof?
>>17088639Even if you limit yourself to plausible moves that a human might be able to rationalize as benefiting them somehow and include forced draws there are still an insanely high number of chess games because the number of games grows exponentiallyIf you don't include the forced draw there are even plausible infinite loops where the optimal strategy for both players is to stay in the loop because whoever does something else first would lose
>>17088583Congrats on being surprised by middle school math, I guess? Most of /sci/ is still at the primary school level
>>17088627Yeah I'll just straight up concede that I overstepped. The more correct answer is this post >>17088600The calculation almost certainly ignores infinite cycles. The real answer is nearly all possible game states are not plausible and require people straight up ignore obvious mate-in-one moves.I'll hit some real math in my next post.
Available to players are 8 pawns and 2 knights, each with a choice of 2 moves. So we have 18 possible first moves for each player. So after the first round, there's 18x18=324 possible states the game could be in. After that round, you have even more moves available. If you moved a pawn you lose that pawn's two-square move but you open up a back rank piece who has even greater range of motion than a pawn might. So another 324 follow-ups is a gross underestimate. 324x324=104,976 by the end of round 2.Round 3: it's over 34 million. Also consider promoting pawns. They could then become any piece you want and your follow-up next turn could include any legal move with that new piece.These numbers grow fast because there's a lot of pieces you can move in many ways. If you completely abandon any semblance of strategy, then it turns out not being much different from how many ways you could arrange the pieces randomly on the board.
>>17088717penis
>>17088860Penis?
Let's try again with actual logic.
>>17089018>actual logiccannot prove anything about reality by its own admission
>>17089020Keep coping. That may be all you have left.
>>17088583>I find that unexpectedWhy? There are more 20-word sentences in English than there are atoms in the universe.
>>17089056Let me spell it out for you. I just find combinatorics interesting.
>>17088583Although people are rational therefore, they will play according to what is called the best move. And the most successful opening is e4 therefore on average it is the most likely opening to be the best opening. Thereby if both sides play the best moves, they are forced moves and there is only 1 optimal game.
>>17089040it's all anyone ever hasthe universe doesn't make sense and you're gonna die, everything else is copeyou should know this
>>17089101Look at you always having to get the last word in. It's quite predictable really.
>>17089063they are neat i must say!
>>17088583There are "countably" "infinite" "outcomes" of go fish. Why would chess be any different?
>>17089177
>>17088860>>17088867just ~10^80 more to go and you'll have proven my statement. Get to work
>>17089221>only <finite number> until you've counted to infinityhmmm
>>17089238Any questions?
