Talk:Chess/Archive 1

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World Championship History

Steinitz did not claim to be champ until after Morphy was dead, when he declared that the match with Zuckertort was for the world championship. Despite the fact that Morphy refused to play, until his death he was still considered the greatest living player, and no one would have taken Steinitz's claim seriously. Moreover, Steinitz's tournament and match record was not stellar in the 1860's; he was simply one of many strong masters. ChessPlayer

Deletion

Removed from main page: Theoretically, at some point in the future, a computer will be able to play all possible chess games and determine the optimal move for any given board position (using Moore's Law as a guide, it probably won't happen until 2030). For example, the fastest chess programs can 'look ahead' and completely finish the last 15 moves in a game (because of "pre-calculated" endgame tables). This is possible because there is a finite number of ways the chess pieces can be arranged on the chessboard.

Finite, yes, but very, very large. As noted at the beginning, the number of possible board positions is probably greater than the number of elementary particles in the universe. Moore's misquoted law says computers double in speed every 18 months, but to search one more possible move on a chessboard typically requires a factor of 16 increase. Computers in 2030 (by Moore's Law) are a mere million times faster, which gets you all of 5 more moves. --Belltower

Particles in Universe

I have seen estimates for the number of particles in the observable universe ranging from 1080 to 1088 or so. Have there been recent changes in those estimates? --AxelBoldt

No, I was acting on seemingly robust, but in hindsight vague recollection. Thanks for catching this. I'm reverting now.--AV


Unicode

The table in Chess/Board is plagued by the same problem as described in talk:Hebrew_alphabet. The HTML code is crashing some browser. I beleive the indentation of the table code is causing Wikipedia to insert a PRE tag and /PRE tag around the entries. It may or may not be the cause of the crash though.

If you can be more specific, we can diagnose this. Particularly, if it consistently crashes when you use a specific browser, please tell us exactly what that is here; we'll then edit the page, and you can try again with that same browser. But if you just talk in generalities we can't help. --LDC

According to the descriptions on talk:Hebrew_alphabet, there were two problems. One with extra spacing with Netscape; the other is crashing on MS IE 5 on Macintosh. Apparently, they are browser bugs that triggered by certain type of HTML code style for table. One person fixed the problem on the Hebrew aphabet page by removing all the extract line feeds and tabs outside of the td tags. If you have a debugger, you can try to see how each browser treats text or white space outside the td tags. My observation is that Netscape will collect them and treat those out of place text in front of the table, but IE tries to collect them and crash on the Macintosh while handling them. On both pages, someone was trying to beautify the HTML code by inserting linefeed and indentation inside the table HTML code without knowing that some browser cannot stand too much beauty.
I cannot speak for the IE problem, but on my Netscape 4.5 on Windows NT, I have to scroll the Chessboard page 4 times before seeing the table.

Now the center of the boards is white on Netscape. On IE, it looks fine.

In IE6, which does come with all unicode stuff you can imagine, and which displays thinds like δ correctly, I only get empty rectangles on the unicode chessboard. How can I fix that? --Magnus Manske

It's not the browser, it's your fonts. Even some of the largest Unicode fonts available (such as MS Arial Unicode) do not have _all_ characters, such as the chess pieces. Some fonts might have the chess pieces but not the Chinese characters. The browser does a pretty good job finding a font with the right characters when needed, but you do have to have the fonts installed. --LDC

Does anyone want to tackle chinese chess? I know the bare bones of the game (how the peices move and their english names), but little else. It's a very tactical game that I enjoy greatly when I have the chance to play it. --BlackGriffen

Downloads

Comments that I've just placed at Talk:Unicode I am not a techie! Nevertheless I can see the usefulness of much of the material available in Unicode. Neither am I the sort of anti-techie that complains that anything in other than plain-Jane unaccented English alphabetical characters must be thrown out of Wikipedia, or that articles should not be displaying meaningless question marks. I was visiting the chess page, and someone there has made a valiant effort to produce diagrams of how the pieces move by using only ordinary keyboard characters. I'm sure that he would not take it as a sign of disrespect when I say that it looks like shit.

I'm sure that most of us would like to see the special symbols, letters, or chinese characters at the appropriate time and place. At the same time I understand that for many Wikipedians there are technical reasons which prevent their hardware from dealing with this material (eg. limited memory). Then there are others for whom only the appropriate software is missing. Even some of the people with hardware restrictions may be able to handle Greek or Russian, though probably not Chinese. In cases where I've tried to find the code, I've ended up wading through reams of technical discussions. These discussions may be very interesting, but they don't provide a solution to my immediate problem.

The practical suggestion may be a notice at the head of any article containing symbols not in ISO 8859-1 saying in effect. "This article contains non-standard characters. You may download these characters by activating this LINK"
Eclecticology

Computer chess

Isn't gnuchess is vastly weaker than other widely distributed software? Fritz or Rebel could defeat most master players under tournament conditions, but I am not sure gnuchess could. Can anyone confirm or contradict? Thanks. --Karl Juhnke

From the main article: "Minor variations to the rules would either make chess a trivially easy task for a computer to win, or conversely leave even elaborate computers easy pickings for amateur players." Really? What minor variations? Does anyone have a citation for this? -- The Anome

It is partly a supposition on my part, but I believe a good one. It is based on the facts that: a) the different algorithms for playing various board games (checkers, chinese chess, othello, etc.) are all variations on minimax searching with pruning heuristics, and that in some of these computers can be beaten by rank amateurs, but others computers are the undisputed world champions. Secondly, it is a general characteristic of tree search algorithms like this that they are *extremely* fragile - a minor change in the pruning heuristics and suddenly things go to pot. --Robert Merkel

I, too, am curious what "minor variations" you have in mind. For example, I understand that it doesn't particularly tip the balance of power between computers and humans to play FischeRandom chess, or chess at material odds. The variations at which computers are known to stink relative to humans all seem to me to involve major rule changes, e.g. bughouse.

The reason computers excel at some games and do poorly at others depends, AFAIK, mostly on the presence/absence of a quick, reliable static evaluation function. In chess you get a very fast and reasonably accurate static evaluation simply by counting up material. Similarly for pruning heuristics, the most important thing is to keep examining a position as long as there are captures, checks, or promotions. Otherwise the static evaluation is OK.

In the absence of any specific examples of how a small change in rules makes a big change in computer playing strength relative to human playing strength, isn't the contested sentence purely speculative? --Karl Juhnke

Nice edit, Axel, issue resolved. Does that mean we should delete the talk section about it? --Karl Juhnke

No, we usually junk talk entries only if the discussion refers to a completely different version than the current one. AxelBoldt

50 Move Rule

If fifty moves have been played by each player without a piece being taken or a pawn moved (in tournament play, some situations are extended to one hundred moves).

I´m quite confident that this was abandond a few years ago. --Vulture

which was abandoned, the fifty move rule, or the hundred move rule? If you're confident, why not amend the text to say that X rule applied for a (insert approximate period of time), but the rule was changed to Y in (approximate time frame). --Wesley
  • See the official rules linked from the article, specifically rule 5.2e. I don't know that there ever was a hundred move rule; the person claiming this should cite a source. What there used to be was a provision that allowed an extension where it could be demonstrated that a forced mate would take longer. This is theoretically possible with some minor piece endings, but those who find themselves in such a situation during a game are unlikely to have the skill needed to demonstrate a forced mate. The practical application of the rule comes in games involving inexperienced players who have great difficulty concluding a game, and even then they have great difficulty in maintaining the score sheet which would prove that 50 moves have passed. In my experience as arbiter in children's tournaments, I can count on someone raising the rule at least once in every tournament in a situation where it is not applicable at all. Eclecticology

Back when I was an active USCF player, there was an addendum to the 50-move rule published by the USCF explicitly laying out one specific set of conditions under which 100 moves would be allowed: it was for certain Knight-vs-Pawn endings, laid out in great detail in the addendum. I still have it in my paper copy of the rulebook. If Vaulture says it was abandoned, and you can't find it in the present rules, I have no doubt that it was in fact abandoned. I was not able to find any information about exactly when that happened, or why. --Lee Daniel Crocker

Board Images

What Lee has been doing with the diagrams makes the article(s) on chess look great! Is there a technique available for creating these drawings to illustrate other articles about chess? Eclecticology

I created the diagrams with "xboard" and "Gimp". If you'd like some diagrams for specific things, let me know. The piece movements were already in separate articles. I think they might be better in a single "Rules of chess" article as well, but that would be a lot more work chasing down old links. Maybe after I get the text itself up to shape we can look at a reorganization. --LDC

Great additions and edits to the chess article, Lee, thanks. I'm trying to imitate you to create images for my sample game. GIMP is rad, judging by my first use. I seem to be succeeding, but I wonder why my images have so much larger file size than yours, maybe five times as big. Default GIMP png compression is 6. Should I compress more? TIA --Karl Juhnke
P.S. I am working on Windows, and I find Winboard isn't as good as the (gratis) ChessBase Light program for drawing diagrams, because the latter can highlight squares and add arrows. Of course, this could be done in the GIMP, but would be relatively laborious, whereas in CBL one can bang out diagrams in a minute or two. For example, here is an image of a knight fork:


But this raises another issue. For the chess pages to look really slick, all the diagrams should look the same, shouldn't they? But that won't happen unless we all use the same tool. And the biggest inducement to using the same tool would be to have an automated generation of diagrams from a description of the position... --Karl Juhnke

Can we hunt down any software which can produce a png out of a position description? I would really like to add some boards to Chess Strategy and Tactics. AxelBoldt

Sounds good. I'll resist my urge to interfere. The first place where I considered adding diagrams was at Chess strategy and tactics to illustrate elementary mating positions, etc. Eclecticology
No no, please do interfere. AxelBoldt
Interference comes in degrees. I'm willing to let people complete a task before I work to screw it up. Any earlier entry is like having the phone ring during sex.

I imagine xboard and gimp might be hacked and scripted to do that, but I'm not sure whether that would get enough use to be worth the effort, or if there might already be something out there. Xboard will read and write game positions in text files. --LDC

If you have gifs of the pieces, here's a cgi script which can create a board on the fly: http://shawn.apocabilly.org/pwg/examples/4ex.html.

There's also a chess style and fonts for LaTeX.

Yes, TeX looks like best candidate for Wikipedia's chess implant, tex-skak can make nice chess diagrams and use FEN for notation. There are lot of free programs which can produce FEN notations, but probably most useful is scid with it's build-in LaTeX export. I can imagine it's use in Wikipedia as: <chess>rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1</chess>. This way can be preety simple to edit and all dozens of chess positions in different Wikipedia's could have the same look. Please, can someone make this possible? --popski

The CGI used Perl's "GD" module, which only creates GIFs, I think. I might also be able to hack something quickly that uses ESR's "sng". --LDC

GD creates png and jpeg but not gif (newer versions, at least). AxelBoldt

A simple VB .Net application can be written to generate PNG (or any other format) chess board images with GUI options for image format, grid numbering, colors and size. If anyone thinks that such an application would be helpful, let me know. The .Net framework would need to be installed on systems in order to run the program though. Robert Lee 13:02 Nov 1, 2002 (UTC)

Organization of related pages

What I find difficult to accept is why the rules about the movement of the pieces are now in separate articles. If you look at this from the point of view of the potential user he is more likely to want to print out the information to have available beside the chessboard. It is unlikely that he will want to click on a different link for each piece. Eclecticology

I agree that many users will want the rules all in one place. On the other hand, there will also be some users (albeit fewer) who are not interested in playing chess but still want information about an individual piece. For example, I might be writing a poem in which I am playing on the various meanings of knight/night, and want a quick reference on the moves, history, strategic importance, etc. of the chess knight. As the mass of chess material on Wikipedia grows, it seems both advisable and inevitable to have a separate article about each piece.

My question is how much repetition to countenance. My programmer's instinct is say "as close to zero as possible", i.e. do it right in one place and then link from everywhere else. But it would definitely disrupt the flow of Axel's strategy article if the blurb about bishops were moved to the bishop article and linked. Similarly, it will break the flow of reading about a tactics article to link to separate pages on fork, pin, skewer, discovered attack, overloading, undermining, interference, underpromotion, zwischenzug, ablenkung, hinlenkung, etc.

Is it possible to put links inside a page, as in HTML? For example, there wouldn't need to be a separate article for forking if one could link directly to the section of the tactics article which deals with forks. That would allow for both readable articles and precise linking. --Karl Juhnke

Right now, that's not possible, but I agree that it would be very desirable. AxelBoldt

A bold black adventurous Knight
Climbed Rooks for the white Queen's delight
Not high Bishop's roar
Nor Pawns at the door
Could save the poor King from this fright.

Your reference to poetry made my descent into doggerel inevitable.

In my view an encyclopedia attempts a balance between long tedious articles one one hand and fragmentation on the other. With specific reference to chess, I consider this long string of separate articles to be fragmentation. May I therefore suggest the following possible organizational outline for this topic

I've moved my subject outline for chess to the main page, and I'm working through the 133 items that "Search" gave me, with a view to making sure that they are all appropriately co-ordinated. 

 Eclecticology

No objection to reorganizing the talk. Indeed, I'd be happier if some of the musty comments were simply deleted. The most current comments are presently hardest to find.

On that note, I'm unclear exactly what your outline is suggesting. Are you proposing one article per bullet, or merely one article per top-level bullet, or a single, long, well-organized article? In the balance between fragmentation and tedium, my hunch is that an on-line encyclopedia can afford more fragmentation than a paper encyclopedia, due to the convenience of hyperlinks, although I don't by any means want to deprecate the value of a coherent, contiguous read. --Karl Juhnke

Philosophically I tend to favour longer articles, while breaking off only certain major topics that really merit special treatment such as Strategy and Tactics. Even though chess is not substantively a very controversial subject, there is still a need to find a common ground between the two extremes of presentation, and a way of accomodating that. The subject outline chart would sit at the top of the article. Each division may or may not have a separate article depending on whether there is enough material or somebody willing to write about it. It may stay on the top page for ages until someone dos somthing at which time it will be easy to "wiki" it along. A brief explanatory paragraph can stay behind; this is probably desirable in the case of first level divisions.
Three or four levels of division in an article may be the maximum that is reasonable, but then when it gets that far, the top level division probably needs to be split off anyway, and receive its own subject outline. Eclecticology

For the record, the main reason I broke chess variants off from the main article is because it's such a rich field (there's so many variants and I plan to write about a lot of them!) and well, variants aren't chess! Also, I think the best thing to do is break all of them off with articles. Leave one paragraph about each of them and a link to follow another article for more detail. That way we'll have more content about Chess! Once an article gets long enough, it's not so inviting to edit anymore... --Chuck Smith

Chess itself is a variant; the moves were changed in the 1400s or the 1500s; to claim that a Chess variant is not chess is a type of prejudice. Samboy 00:03, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Since reference to the game of chess represent an overwhelming proportion of the uses of the word "chess", I felt that setting up a disambiguating page that requires links to "Chess (game)" would be unnecessarily awkward. Other uses of the word are fairly minor, and searchers who want these links need to be informed immediately that they aare in the wrong place without the need to wade through a long article for references that may not even be there. A brief disambiguating note at the beginning seems a small price to pay when a disambiguating page would make everybody's work more complicated.
I'll deal with the placement of the subject overview later. I still believe it should be at the beginning, but I'm willing to listen to arguments. Eclecticology
I think the summary should go after the article because it will take the user to more depth. It's like, ok now you've read the introduction, to go deeper, here's some links. --Chuck Smith

In the section "Rules", the png of the original position overlaps with the "1." from the first rule. This is on IE 6.0. AxelBoldt

Same in IE5.0. Underlying HTML looks OK to me - IE specific bug? Enchanter
Yup, looks like it. Netscape 4.72 on Windows renders it just fine. IE probably doesn't quite understand how big the png is. Should we break down and fix our page, or wait until they fix their code? Is there a way to report bugs to MS? AxelBoldt
The games of Go and Shogi hold similar places in Asian cultures.

I don't think either Garry Kasparov or Vishwanathan Anand, both Asians of course, would agree that Go and Shogi were preeminent in their countries.

I would change Asian to Oriental, but I get the impression that that's considered pejorative currently in the US. Does anyone have a better term?

--Matthew Woodcraft

  • How about Japanese? These two are very particular to Japan. Eclecticology

I think "East Asia" fits better; Go is played in Korea and China, and chinese chess is played in China as well. Hopefully, India doesn't count as East Asia, since they don't play Go or Shogi there. AxelBoldt

Right, East Asia, and eliminate Shogi. It is popular only in Japan, and even in Japan doesn't have the status of go.

Deep Blue and Deep Fritz

Doesn't Deep Blue deserve a mention in the main text?

...Only if Deep Fritz gets more of a mention.

So...write something about it. Eclecticology

Making a deep opening book

Hey uh like if someone could figure out how a user could start from the beginning and enter a move-and so on-we could set up some sweet opening book tables-but we'd need either a page for each move or some kinda java program or whatnot

Lir 16:15 Oct 6, 2002 (UTC)

Isn't there a question here of how deep a coverage you want to give to the openings. Where is the dividing line between a general encyclopaedic work and a specialized book about chess? If I understand your point correctly, it seems as if you want something like what you find in chess playing software. Eclecticology 19:13 Oct 6, 2002 (UTC)

Absolutely. We should go as deep as we can. We should do chess here just like we do normal entries. We should branch and branch and branch and keep going. We should make it a goal to have chess solved on this site. There are two ways to do this. The first method is somewhat wasteful because it involves making a LOT of html pages-the second method is very easy. It just takes somebody taking the time to write a simple program that itnerfaces with wikipedia.

A fantastic idea! You can't put a hotel on Boardwalk until you've built four houses! Still, I look forward to seeing the effects of the "simple" program that you plan to write for doing this Eclecticology 07:08 Oct 7, 2002 (UTC)

I dont plan to write any program. I don't do compsci.

I agree with a point made earlier: we should have one page which summarizes the rules of chess, self-contained and ready for printing. The current fragmentation is bad. Repetition of material is no big problem. If the page about the bishop repeats information from the rules page and from the strategy and tactics page, that's ok. AxelBoldt 19:54 Oct 6, 2002 (UTC)

Is there anything like a chess wiki? This could be added to the article (discussion to improve the article, but I wouldn´t ask if I wasn´t curious myself :) )

Capitalization and piece names

Is there a convention for capitalization of first letter of piece names? In the Chess openings page upper and lower case are mixed. In the end game page I've made them consistently lower case (I think this is easier to read).

I want to know if I can create a page called "chess terminology" and explain some of the chess jargon. Would this make it too much like a dictionary? It is distracting to define all the new terms (like rank and file and minor piece). I'd like someone's opinion because I'm a wikinewbie. Arvindn

There's certainly a lot of chess related technical terms, and it would be very useful, I think, to have a page that gathered them all together. So long as they are all on the one page, and you don't give a separate article to every little thing, there's no danger of it becoming too like a dictionary entry, I think. So good luck with it!
And, yes - I think lower case initials for piece names are much easier to read, and also much more normal in chess literature. --Camembert

Possible misleading paragraph

This paragraph seems misleading:

These changes collectively helped popularize chess by making the action faster-paced. The game in Europe since that time has been almost the same as is played today. The current rules were completely finalized in the early 19th century.

According to Murray chess was more popular in Medieval Europe than it is today. The modern game developed a more devoted following and was open to deeper analysis. --Jeff 17:10 Jan 14, 2003 (UTC)

Fairy Chess

Why was the link to fairy chess removed? -- SGB 2003-03-01

I can't see why either, I'll revert it. Eclecticology

I spent a few hours last night reseaching and composing a page on "fairy chess" only to find that it is synonymous with "fantasy chess variants". As such, fairy chess is not parallel with Baroque Chess, Atomic Chess, and Fischer Random Chess (which are examples of the class) and does not belong in the bulleted list. Rather than create a new page for a synonym for an existing page, I added descriptions of fairy chess to chess variant and chess puzzles. I can't find a description of a unique game fairy chess. Kirkjobsluder 2003-03-01

My understanding is that "fairy chess" is any variations on chess played with fairy pieces - that is, pieces like the grasshopper and the knightrider which do not appear in orthodox chess. Fairy chess should, in my opinion, be given an article - it would be a useful place to gather descriptions of all these unorthodox pieces together. I'll edit the relevant pages to reflect this. If I'm mistaken, I'm sure somebody will revert me. --Camembert
Well, I asked around a bit, and it turns out I was wrong (sort of) so I'm reverting myself. "Fairy chess" is used to mean any variant with unorthodox rules (this could mean using different pieces, but could also mean different boards - like cylindrical boards - or a different number of moves, as in progressive chess). I still think we could have an article called something like fairy chess pieces though, to detail the different pieces found in these variants (I'm making some notes for it). --Camembert

I defer to this responsible outline of themed chess variants:

Chess Variant Pages- Themed Chess Variants

http://www.chessvariants.com/ithemed.html

Note that there are 11 categories in which "fantasy variants" is listed merely as one. "Fairy chess" is not listed as a category, though.

OmegaMan

Chess in other languages

Is there already a list somewhere of other non-English names for chess as it is for example in the article for the Earth? If not and if someone would make it - here are some terms:

de: German das "Schach(spiel)" ((singular) *n)
eo: Esperanto "sxako"
es: Spanish "ajedrez" ((singular) *m)
fr: French "jeu d'Échecs" ??
hr: Croatian "Šah" ((singular) *m)
nl: Dutch "schaken"
pt: Portuguese "xadrez"
ru: Russian "shahmaty" ("шахматы") ((plural) *m)
sl: Slovene "Šah" ((singular) *m)
sv: Swedish "Schack"
sh: Serbocroatian"Šah" ((singular) *m)
sr: Serbian "Šah" ("shah", "шах") ((singular) *m)

Best regards. --XJamRastafire 23:11 May 9, 2003 (UTC)

Is Chess solvable?

The following was added recently:

In mathematical terms, chess is a finite complete-information game; thus, it can and has been proven that a winning strategy for the white player exists in theory.

I am pretty sure that this is rubbish i.e. the 'thus' does not follow from the previous line (e.g. tic-tac-toe / noughts and crosses is as 'complete-information' but that doesn't make it a win for crosses!) And I am pretty sure I would've noticed in the papers if someone had solved chess. Pcb21 15:56 26 May 2003 (UTC)

I changed the statement. It can be proved that there is a strategy by which white can either win or force a draw. It's an existence theorem and no one knows what it is. Roadrunner

I removed the following paragraph ( i.e. the paragraph that Roadrunner had just added to replace the initial bogus paragraph --pcb21):

In mathematical terms, chess is a finite complete-information game; thus, it can and has been proven that there is a strategy by which white can either win or draw.

This doesn't follow at all, as far as I can see. Do you have a reference for it? --Zundark 16:41 26 May 2003 (UTC)

You're right, I think, it doesn't follow. Chess is theoretically solvable (there are only a finite number of positions, after all), but that doesn't mean to say white can force a win or draw - for all we know, the starting position might be zugzwang... --Camembert
The opinion of rec.chess.* is the same as yours, Camembert. The possibilty of initial position being zugzwang has not been discounted. Pcb21 18:06 26 May 2003 (UTC)

The opinion at "rec.chess" is incorrect.

Even though the best chess supercomputers remain orders of magnitude away from having the processing might to solve an entire game of standard chess, its initial position is NOT zugzwang for white. In principle, a first-move-of-the-game advantage always exists for white in ALL chess-related games (to varying extents) except those which are unstable (i.e., fatally flawed in design).

It fares well for standard chess that the armies are equal and symmetrical (comparatively, at least) in their initial positions. Furthermore, the opening book and endgame studies, based upon the most effective, known human and/or computer moves and their analyses, have been so exhaustively searched and richly catalogued that most modern chess experts firmly believe if there were ANY advantage for black, it would have discovered and irrefutably, routinely used to achieve a material and/or positional advantage by some definite point in the opening game (regardless of the opening chosen and executed by white).

In expert tournament play, appr. 55% of games which do not end in a draw are victories for white. Although zugzwang for white has not yet been conclusively disproven mathematically, it is exceedingly unlikely to exist since standard chess is a stable game. Although the stability of standard chess has never been proven by mathematical means either, there are no serious design flaws present, easily detectable by experts, to trigger fundamental doubts regarding its stability.

By the way, when standard chess is someday solved by a supercomputer, it will be found to predestine either be a victory for white [most likely] or a draw but NEVER a victory for black.

OmegaMan

You said it yourself: "zugzwang for white has not yet been conclusively disproven mathematically". Of course it's unlikely, but it's possible. That's the point. --Camembert

I understand. I guess it depends upon exactly where one judges that the line between a small yet admissible possibility and an impossibility should be drawn. Mathematics will not decide for us. For example, I am 99+% sure that Gawd does not exist. I say that makes me an atheist. My religious friend says that only makes me an agnostic.

OmegaMan

Chess is almost certaintly not a forced win for white; there are a lot of ways black can get a drawish game (e.g. Petroff's defense) Samboy 22:29, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Don't you think black would get the advantage (and thus win) if white made some really stupid opening like 1. a3? Just wondering... ZeroOne 22:22, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I think that black can force a draw; hence white can still force a draw if he makes a non-move like 1. a3? (since, for all intents and purposes white now has the black pieces). Samboy 22:42, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Mathematics can descide for us, it just hasn't yet. Chess is a finite game specified by specific rules, as such it is perfectly possible that chess will be solved mathematically in the future. In 2002 am important paper stated that 8x8 Hex was unsolvable without a fundamental breakthrough, two years on both 8x8 and 9x9 Hex have been solved using newly invented techniques. --Imran 23:06, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Yes, Chess is finite, but the number gets big very quickly. This is like cryptography; in theory, it is simply a matter of running a simple loop to solve any cipher, regardless of key size. In the real universe, if one starts going through all of the possible keys one by one, the universe will die a heat death before the cipher key is found.
Likewise, with chess, the numbers get big quickly. Assuming that there are 16 legal moves in any position (a conservative estimate), and that a game can be 40 moves long (again, somewhat conservative), there is 160 bits to deal with here. Hex, in comparison, merely has a polynomial big-O expansion (in plain English: Hex is a far simpler game than Chess). I don't think we're going to solve Chess for at least 100 years. Samboy 20:17, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
You misunderstand, you can solve games without using brute force, you can exploit the underlying mathematical structure in games. To use your cryptography analogy it is possible to break cryptographic systems without having to try every key. You can have simple ciphers which have (10^40)+ keys but will break using simple techniques like frequency analysis. (Incidently when considering the board size Hex has been proven to be PSPACE-Complete see Stefan Reisch, "Hex ist PSPACE-vollstandig" in Acta Informatica, volume 15, pp. 167-191.). Google for "Combinatorial Game Theory" to see some examples of this (although CGT isn't directly applicable to chess) --Imran 21:07, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
There actually have been papers showing that Chess expands in EXPTIME. Here is an interesting link: generalizations to n*n boards (of chess) are EXPTIME-complete. Samboy 22:04, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

EXPTIME-complete is also consistent with my months of experience in playtesting some chess variants. Generally, it requires an average of 8-10 times as long to thoroughly search (via brute force methods) each successively deeper ply. Crossing 10-12 plies, computer playing both white & black, is not too time-consuming for a very fast computer examining most chess variants yet 15-18 plies is impossible in less than years with current technology. Unfortunately, an incisive, evenly-matched game can be expected to run 40-50 moves. This is a very extreme shortfall. Therefore, I can easily believe that we are at least one century away from being able to completely "burn thru" standard FIDE chess (i.e., calculate the game of all possible rational games). --OmegaMan

Shatranj

This page claims that Chatrang was the first version of chess, and that Shatranj is the same thing. This does not appear to be the case, at least given the outline on chessvariants. They state that the first version was called Chaturanga, and that Shatranj is a different version taken from it in Persia.

Yes, see Talk:Chatrang. (However, chaturanga may not be the first version of chess, though it is the earliest version of which there is any clear record.) I was hoping that someone who knew about these things would write the chaturanga/chatrang/shatranj articles, but it doesn't look like it's going to happen, so I may end up having to do it myself. --Zundark 13:39 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)
So little is known about them that it'd probably hard to write a decent article about them. As for chaturanga being the original chess, it really depends on how we define chess, for instance if we class Shogi and Chinese Chess as "chess" (which we don't in this article) then chaturanga without a doubt is not the original version, however the games do share a common ancestor about which we know virtually nothing, although Alex Kraaijeveld is trying to reconstruct it using phylogenetic analysis. I'm not sure how accurate the chessvariants site is, the only one of its given sources I would trust to be reliable is the David Parlett book. --Imran 22:49 14 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Removed section

Removed or from earlier board games played in China. Originally used for astrological purposes, it soon became a purely militaristic game involving four major arms: soldiers, elephants, horses and chariots from the article due to its highly speculative nature. --Imran

Should we make articles more accessible to non-chess players?

The chess-related pages all seem to be well-written and well-researched (knowing little more than the basics of the game, I guess I cannot really judge). What I found striking though is that at the beginning of the chess article it is not mentioned what the goal is, i e who the winner is. Could you add this for the benefit of those who read this article because they don't already know the game (shouldn't be a surprise considering this is an encyclopaedia)? --KF 12:57, 2 Jan 2004 (UTC)

2n grows quickly

Just a little tidbit to add: If you put one grain of rice on the first square, 2 on the second, 4 on the next, you end up with (thanks to maple)

sum('2^(k-1)', 'k'=1..64);

18446744073709551615

That's 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 -- 18.4 quintillion grains. I'm going to add that little detail to the article :) →Raul654 07:50, Feb 10, 2004 (UTC)

I don't mean to be rude... but this doesn't appear to be about chess? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:35, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Ack, the problem of sequentially reading ones watchlist... the bit in the article is just about related to chess. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:38, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Yes, just to clarify for those who are reading this. I made the above calculation because the article talks about it. "When the King asked how much we were to pay for it, the inventor said he claimed 1 grain of rice for the first square..." (from the article) →Raul654 09:47, Feb 10, 2004 (UTC)
We alreay have that somewhere else in myriad of chess article, although exactly where I can't remember. --Imran 10:24, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Found it at Shahnama theory I'm removing it from this page as the one at Shahnama theory is more accurate. --Imran 13:04, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)
The story has to be featured here as it relates to the birth of chess. I added a couple of sentences to the article. And, this is also the root of geometric progression.

I don't think the new image is any better than the previous image really, especially as this new image isn't PD/GFDL. --Imran 23:52, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

---

Opening Move count

Opening Moves / White - Black

White

Fantastic article on Chess, esp. the beginning about the # of possible moves, exactly what I was looking for when i entered it in :).

Perhaps the next logical step is to do the opening moves, and it is quite easy to do white:

2*8 possible pawn moves (each of the 8 being moved either 1 or 2 steps) + 2*2 possible knight moves (each knight forking left or right) = 20 possible opening moves for white.

I know many of their names, and I have a few chess webpages bookmarked as well.

Does anyone know how to tackel black's opening moves? Usually they are in response to white's move so its a little more complex. I'll draw up a list of white moves and then we can go from there. --ShaunMacPherson 05:05, 24 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yes. see list of chess openings -- "tackling" the moves is extremely complicated. There are no less than 500 "opening categories"; from A00 to E99. Almost nothing has been done with the list, so pick an opening and I'll happilly work on it with you. Lirath Q. Pynnor

Priorities Really Far Out Of Whack

I have just made a few changes to the chess entry and when I get done picking my jaw up off the floor I'll finish typing this... ` 

\
 *

Okay I'm ready now.

I find it very alarming that no mention was made in the overview that each player has 16 of the pieces for his own, only that there were 32 pieces. Would communists assume each player "owns" half the pieces? Yes, nitpicking, that's what we do here, we pick nits. Also no mention is made that the pieces are differentiated (usually by color though not always) and the squares on the board are also differentiated. There are many pictures, but what about the blind? Let me know if I'm too aggressive hunting nits here. To put it bluntly, that overview sucks a$$...

Scrolling down, however, we find over one hundred links to chess history, chess literature, chess moves, chess games, chess people, chess places, chess everything and this *BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP* lousy overview.

I think the priorities of people around here are SERIOUSLY out of whack. - Plautus satire 14:54, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I see one of my shadows has come along and "fixed" my edition less than seven minutes after I made it. Thanks for watchdogging me, Raul654! - Plautus satire 14:57, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I edited this article 2 weeks ago, and it is still on my watchlist. But I think you have enough people keeping a close eye on you already. →Raul654 14:59, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

Any excuse will do, Raul654. (I do find it interesting that you were the first one to quibble in that intervening seven minutes. - Plautus satire 15:03, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)) - Plautus satire 15:02, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hi Plautus, I don't think we've met before. A quick tip - if you have a problem with an article, even if you think it so bad that it makes you angry, please don't get rude and aggressive (like using caps in summary comments, feigning swearing), just calmly lay out what you think is wrong with the article, and what might be done to improve it. Then people will read the suggestions and a consensus will be formed. People don't mind being told that an article they have contributed to isn't perfect, but they can't help get a bit defensive when they get really lambasted, after all they are only human. Thanks. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:05, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC) (via edit conflict)
That's very good advice, Pcb21. I am calm, however, thank you for your concern. I was attempting thematically to illustrate the hypothetical frustration some people might experience while contributing to wikipedia. I did not mean to trick anybody into thinking I was boiling hot mad, and I apologize if I took this joke so far that it became offensive, as that was not my intent. Thanks again for your constructive comments. - Plautus satire 15:12, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Oops, sorry, I got completely the wrong end of the stick! Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:37, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Defense of Luck in the Entries

I would like to see a defense of the use of the word "luck" in this entry on chess. I feel the word "luck" has a meaning that is so arbitrary that it is useless in an encyclopedia except in the entries directly related to describing the phenomena itself. Luck is not quantifiable or really qualifiable in any objective sense, so it should not be used as an accurate qualifier or quantifier in any context where accuracy is important. - Plautus satire 15:02, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Wouldn't "chance" be a better word than "luck" for that particular sentence? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:06, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I tried "determination," since that seemed most applicable for games. What is "luck" used to do? Determine. Winner, loser, whatever. Apparently this word "determination" was deemed "POV" or "non factual" or "better elsewhere" or maybe, perhaps, it's just my fringe conspiracy theory about chess. - Plautus satire 15:14, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
No explanation was offered for why "luck" was reinserted preferentially to "determination", so I can only speculate, as I am unable to read anything in Raul654's mind. - Plautus satire 15:16, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
"Game of chance" has a more familar ring to it than "Game of luck" or "Game of determination", so I'll change it to that word to make the article that bit clearer. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 15:37, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for your help in reaching this compromise, Pcb21. I for one have no objections to "chance," as it seems at least on the surface to be quantifiable and qualifiable (likelihood and confidence). - Plautus satire 15:44, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Only "Estimates" on Legal Positions?

Why are there only "estimates" on the number of legal positions? Isn't this something that can be discretely calculated without any guessing? - Plautus satire 18:32, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Not in a reasonable amount of time. →Raul654 19:48, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)
Oh, right, I forgot, they can build a computer to beat every chess player on the planet, but not one to calculate the total number of legal movespositions(Plautus satire 19:53, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)). Interesting. - Plautus satire 19:52, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Hmm, let's see, 64 positions, 32 pieces, seems like a finite problem. - Plautus satire 19:54, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Incorrect - They *could* build it, but it could very well take a thousand years to get the answer. Calculating a good move (or a series thereof) takes much, much, much less time than counting all the possible positions. Because not all are legal, they would have to be enumerated, to some degree. →Raul654 19:56, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)
It's a trivial calculation to determine all (legal and illegal) positions. There is an operator known as factorial... (!) - Plautus satire 20:00, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Also, the positions need not be counted, they can be calculated using multiplication. - Plautus satire 20:00, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Illegal positions can be eliminated by logical proofs. - Plautus satire 20:02, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
It's a trivial calculation to determine all (legal and ilegal) positions - hence, the qualifier, legal positions. Illegal positions can be eliminated by logical proofs. - do it, and then we'll consider changing the article. →Raul654 20:03, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)
If I "do it," I will not ask for your consideration in the future, since you clearly imply it is impossible. - Plautus satire 20:06, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
For example, you can not have two bishops of the same color on the same color. How difficult would it be to calculate those illegal moves and subtract them from the total possible positions? Lather, rinse, repeat. Iteration is the mother (and undisputed master, see: fractals) of complexity. - Plautus satire 20:05, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Actually I think it would be harder than you imply. If I give you a position at random, what is your algorithm for telling me whether it is possible to reach it or not? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 20:15, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Many moves could be eliminted very quickly, as I explained about bishops. [Virtually] Every other piece has the potential to be anywhere on the board in the future. The only pieces that can't move backward are pawns. It would seem that only pawns and bishops are a problem so far. What other positions could be illegal? - Plautus satire 20:21, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

And I just realized another exception, two kings can not be adjacent. Note that it's already been pointed out this is different than calculating legal moves. Without the precondition of explain why two players would get there pieces in a certain configuration all bets are off, it's a simple matter of "can this piece be here after the beginning of the game?" - Plautus satire 20:28, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Ah, I understand a bit better now. You are thinking that the problem is easier that it actually is. Consider the position where all the pieces are on their opening squares, except for the white king which is on e3. This position is illegal - i.e. is no way it could arise in a real game. But your method doesn't account for it. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 20:29, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
See above where I ask "can this piece be here after the beginning of the game?" - Plautus satire 20:31, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
That's all fine in theory... simply characterize the reachable and non-reachable positions in enumeratable way, and enumerate them. The practice may be difficult... are those bounds the best known? Have people seriously tried to improve the bounds? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 20:12, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Another excellent point, and one I tried to make a bit late in this game. Can we at least bound the answer better? - Plautus satire 16:25, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I already explained how I'd calculate it, if, for example, I were being paid to do it. I'd calculate the legal moves, calculate the illegal moves, then through simple reverse addition (known as subtraction) I would derive the solution. - Plautus satire 20:19, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Would anybody care to explain where the big unsolvable mystery here is? The more I think about it the more I'm convinced there is a quick solution based firmly in logic and mathematics. - Plautus satire 20:30, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

There are arrangmenets that are legal but impossible to achieve, which you are neglecting. Your estimate is far too high. →Raul654 20:32, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)
What estimate? I didn't estimate the number of moves. Stop with the autoargumentum already, it's distracting people who are trying to talk to each other, not themselves. - Plautus satire 20:45, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I'd calculate the legal moves, calculate the illegal moves, then through simple reverse addition (known as subtraction) I would derive the solution. - this is, by any defintion of the word, an estimate - and it's too high. So don't cry when people point out your mistakes. I'd hate for anyone to cry that much. →Raul654 20:50, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)
Please stop arguing with your straw men, Raul654. Clealy I meant positions, and given I've already misstated "positions" as "moves" I thought you would do what the wikiquette guidelines suggested and give me the benefit of the doubt, and understand that clearly I meant positions. This is not an estimate, but an abstract of the algorithm I would use to solve this problem. - Plautus satire 21:06, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Plautus, I don't know anything much about chess, but I would point out that Pierre de Fermat thought much the same thing about a little idea of his, and it proved ridiculously hard to do. I suggest actually performing the calculations -- you're right, common sense indicates we can probably do this, but often common sense is misleading. Just my two cents, Jwrosenzweig 20:33, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Good point. Now Fermat's last theorom is proven and part of history. Well done, thanks for supporting both sides and being impartial here. - Plautus satire 20:44, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I hate to get metaphysical, but you leave me no choice. How is the universe able to keep track of "legal" positions on a chess board. How are people able to determine the legality of a move? How are either of these two co-related things possible unless there exists a near-instantaneous way of determination? Oh, right, I forgot, the universe processes at infinite speed...except during big bangs. - Plautus satire 20:35, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Forgive me, Plautus, but I don't understand the above....probably too little scientific knowledge on my part. Could you explain it in more simple terms? Jwrosenzweig 20:37, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
It's not your fault, it's incoherent rambling. →Raul654 20:39, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

Just to end this debate, I'm willing to admit that you twothree bothall lack the ability to calculate the number of legal positions and therefore must only estimate. Time to move on, now, I've already wasted enough of my time on this and nobody is paying me to care yet. - Plautus satire 20:41, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

We're all volunteers too, Plautus, and nobody can take broad statements solely on faith. If you want to be paid, I suggest contacting Encyclopedia Britannica, which is always in need, I am sure, of editors with scientific expertise. Jwrosenzweig 20:48, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)

For anyone who is interested, I did do a bit of number crunching. For 2-32 chess pieces (the number changes as pieces are captured), the number of arrangements = sum(n! * choose (64, n), n=2..32) = .4918139231 * 10 ^ 88. →Raul654 20:47, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)

Note that with this calculation you are counting each piece uniquely, however in actual fact you could swap two white pawns around (or two white rooks etc) and get the exact same position.. though this sum counts them as two separate positions. You can divide your sum by 8!*8!*2*2*2*2*2*2 to get rid of this. This leaves the number of positions. You then have the hard problem of deciding whether it can be reached from the beginning. Then you think "ah damn I've forgot about pawn promotions" and it gets complicated again! Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 21:35, 25 Feb 2004 (UTC)
This is a very good point. Pawn promotions make it possible for any piece to be at any place at a future point in the game, including two bishops on the same color. This simplifies the matter, it doesn't complicate it. There are still a finite number of pieces. - Plautus satire 16:23, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

There are more possible chess positions, then there are known atoms in the universe. Its hardly a "trivial" matter to calculate such a thing. Lirath Q. Pynnor

Actually there are dramatically fewer (reachable) chess positions than atoms in the universe. There are dramatically more possible chess games than atoms. Of course I agree that it is far from trivial to calculate any of the three figures, though number of positions would be the least inaccessible. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:19, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)
In your opinion. - Plautus satire 16:23, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hey, everybody, I just wanted to say that I'm glad to see people are interested in this issue enough to discuss it. Perhaps I took a wrong turn somewhere, but my original intent was to stimulate discussion to improve an entry I just took an interest in (due to the email list, by the way). I admit I've been pretty defensive lately, I apologize for that. Is it possible we can put our heads together and come up with a better range for the numbers there, or is that really the absolute best we can get? I hope we can do better, but if not I will accept we are not superhuman. - Plautus satire 01:31, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

To be honest I personally don't think it is worth me trying to get a better range. Whether it turned out to be hard, or not too bad actually, it would count as original research which Wikipedia doesn't accept for inclusion anyway. Of course if you want to have a bash at it as a your own project, I'd enjoy reading the fruits of your labour. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:19, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Why you felt the need to get combative again is beyond me, but since you did, I'll bite. Now all that you need to do to make your case is prove that wikipedia has no "accepted" entries that could be described as "original research". If I find one, I invalidate your hypothesis. Who is on the firmer ground here? - Plautus satire 15:50, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Please see What Wikipedia entries are not entry number 10. P.S. Could you let me know what you found combative about my response, as it will help me tailor my talk page style in the future. I in fact meant to be precisely the opposite! :-) Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 16:10, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)
What I find combative is your intent to turn my attempts to collaborate into an argument. If you don't think it's practical to calculate, then you could have simply stated that estimates are good enough. As it stands, observable reality dictates there is one right answer and innumerable wrong answers. Those two numbers on the page now are almost certainly two of the wrong ones. Thanks for your patience on this issue, and please stop trying to be so combative. And I ask that even if you don't think it's possible to improve the entry, do not try to convince others that this entry is now perfect. - Plautus satire 16:19, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I believe I read 1080 somewhere. 64.232.242.237

Does anybody have a hard number with a source that they want to put in the article? If not, I don't see any point in arguing about this. --Camembert

Even at chess tournaments, where I've seen this discussed, nobody really had an idea how many positions were possible. Suffice it to say, there are a lot of possible positions. There does seem to be general agreeement, around the internet and in books, that there are more possible chess positions than there are atoms within the known universe. Lirath Q. Pynnor

The general agreement is that there are more chess games. As our article correctly states, there are far fewer reachable positions (see above) Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 18:57, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)
The figures given in the article reflect current state-of-the-art estimates. A generally agreed upper bound is 2^50, the lower bound for the number of atoms in the universe is about 2^65. So there are substantially more atoms then valid chess positions. In comparision, in cryptography the upper limit on what's currently computable is regarded to be about 2^80 operations. --Imran 19:02, 26 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Well, the size of the known universe is always increasing -- so perhaps it has become sufficiently large. Lirath Q. Pynnor
Many years ago, I recall seeing some relevant figures in the "Guiness Book Of World Records" where chess is listed as one of the world's most complicated board games (by combinatoric measure). Sorry, I no longer have it but check it out. They try very hard to use accurate, responsible quantities. Their credibility and reputation depends upon it. --OmegaMan
I very much doubt that Western Chess is the most complicated board game - Go would likely beat it on that score (by a long way, I think) Evercat 19:34, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Up higher on this page, I calculated an upper limit of ~10^88 (legal and illegal) chess arrangments. Each intersection in go can be empty, occupied by white, or by black. That's 3^(19^2) possibilities = 4.67*10^108. →Raul654 20:46, Feb 27, 2004 (UTC)
See Board game complexity.

While Go may have more possible positions, that is really only because the Go board is much larger. Go only has one type of playing piece, and it is incapable of moving. Lirath Q. Pynnor

This is indeed very true. I wonder what the complexity of 9x9 Go is. There are also bigger board Chess variants like Grand Chess (10x10) or even Chu Shogi (12x12). Evercat 19:59, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Another way of measuring the amount of skill in a game (anyone know if this is mentioned on the 'pedia by the following way) is the following:
Take the World Champion of the game in question. Find a player that he can beat 75% of the time. Then take that second player and find someone he can beat 75% of the time. Then find someone he can beat 75% of the time... and so on. Repeat until you reach the weakest player in the world. The number of iterations required is a rough estimate of the level skill, as the more skill a game requires the easier it is to get 75% better than someone (with games of pure chance then even the World Champion has a 50-50 chance against the weakest player so the measure of skill is 0). Rankings such as go kyu and chess ELO ratings can be used to work out the skill measure. AFAICR go came highest of all games with about 30 iterations, and chess second with 20-something. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 00:04, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Moved from main page,

Claude Shannon, the father of modern information theory, calculated the total number of chess games, a number bigger than the number of atoms in the known universe, if you wished to play perfectly at each move. That number, 10120, is called the Shannon number in his honor.

Removed because it (1) doesn't make sense, (2) Seems to duplicate the game complexity statement and (3) Googling for "shannon number" and chess gets no resutls. --Imran 17:52, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It does make sense, Claude Shannon calculated that there are more possible chess games than there are atoms in the universe. If you can't find something in a search, try making it more general -- for instance, the term "Shannon number" may not be common but certainly you could find articles about Claude Shannon, chess, information theory, and Claude Shannon's calculation. Lirath Q. Pynnor

I mean it literally makes no sense "calculated the total number of chess games,..., if you wished to play perfectly at each move" doesn't work for me as a sentence. I assume it's meant to refer to game tree complexity but we already cover game-tree complexity in that paragraph, so the only point in having the statement is to inform people about the "shannon number" but if the Shannon number doesn't exist the sentence seems to have no purpose. After all Shannon was hardly the only theorist to have worked on chess. --Imran 22:11, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)
The 'Shannon number' does exist: http://www.ddj.com/documents/s=9064/ddj0210ai001/. To date, no mathematician has proved him wrong. Giftlite
It's not something that you can prove (at least with current mathematics), but current estimates place it at 2^123. Note that you don't have to calculate this many games in order to produce "perfect play", as you can do so on the basis of state-space evaluation as opposed to game-tree search. --Imran 03:21, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

The freewheeling use of astonomical, combinatoric values, although informative and not mathematically errant, could leave the strong, deceptive impression upon the reader that chess is far too complicated for any human mind below genius level to play well. In fact, chess can be played well by numerous people with above average intelligence who are serious about learning the game precisely because much practical reductionism can be implemented without introducing hazards.

For example:

In the opening, a player can make one's first 6 moves (to arbitrarily choose a number) in any order one sees fit as long as the responses are tactically appropriate to the moves made by the opponent along the way to that point in the game. This means it is unnecessary to rotely memorize 6! (720) methods to achieve a certain, desired opening (thru 6 moves) in response to the opponent's chosen opening.

Conceive of playing openings in chess as being somewhat analogous to solving a jigsaw puzzle. There are a vast number of ways to solve the puzzle but all that matters is creating the complete picture which can only exist in ONE way.

Likewise, the opening book is memorized as "pattern matching". If white has completed his/her first six moves to achieve a certain pattern of pieces occupying squares, then black should respond by executing his/her sixth move via one defined, legal way to remain as strongly positioned as possible.

OmegaMan

Values of pieces

The idea of pieces having points values does not seem to be present in Wikipedia in any complete form. Something similar to http://chess.about.com/library/ble23pvl.htm ? I have always been under the impression that some official scoring system existed which valued pieces to decide victory in incomplete games and similar. Is this incorrect? Chris Wood 11:45, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

A commonly used system for assessing the value of material is outlined at chess strategy and tactics. As far as I am aware, no such system has ever had any official status (it would be rather odd if it had, since there's a lot more to chess than having more "points" on the board than your opponent). --Camembert
As Camembert says, there is absolutely no official rule assigning "points" to pieces. However, in one of the variants of antichess, the winner is the player with less units on the board if one of the players is stalemated (all pieces counting equally). Arvindn 13:17, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)
You may furthermore be interested in evaluating the detailed opinions of editors and other experts on this topic at talk:chess strategy and tactics- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Chess_strategy_and_tactics OmegaMan
Thank you for the responses! Interesting stuff :-). Chris Wood 21:01, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Have you seen my explanations at FRC/ChessBox - http://www.chessbox.de/Compu/schachansatz1_e.html ? Scharnagl 29. Jun 2004

Thai chess

I see that the empty link for the Thai national variant of chess has been changed from an empty link to Makruk into an active link to an existing article on Mak-yek. Something is wrong here. If we compare the rules of Makruk as given here http://www.ishipress.com/makrook.htm it seems clear that either one of the articles is wrong, or they aren't the same game. My hunch is that Mak-yek is too far removed from chess to be considered a lineal descendant like Makruk and Shogi and Xiangqi, just like Go-moku is not really a variant of Go, but I don't know enough to be sure. Can anyone help? Thanks, --Fritzlein 23:35, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Chess Wiki?

Dear all... I think that chess is more than ripe for having a wiki all of its own, a la the one that there is for They Might Be Giants. The sheer scope of stuff which there is on chess - players, openings, individual games with analysis, tournaments... I drool at how wonderfully detailed it could be, going into the sort of specifics which perhaps don't *quite* fit in on wikipedia.org. Anyone else up for it? What would be the first step? - Mack 12/05/04

Up to 218 possible moves

The article mentions without references that there can be as many as 218 possible moves. Any comments on this ?

/Martin

The number of legal positions in chess is very large and computers didn't solve chess so I think that 218 is not the maximum number of possible moves in chess from a position.

Luming

Typically an average position has thirty to forty possible moves, but there may be as few as zero (in the case of checkmate or stalemate) or as many as 218.

At any one point in time, there are a maximum of 218 single moves from that position. If you look 10 moves ahead there are way more (assume 40 moves per position, that would mean 40^20 (~10^32) choices for the next 10 moves) but at each position, there is (apparently, although I have no proof of the exact number) a maximum of 218 moves. Think about how much each piece could move if it were placed in one of the four centre squares (K=8, Q=27, R=14, B=13, N=8) or on the second row (P=2) which means (counting both sides) 2(8+27+2(14)+2(13)+2(8)+8(2)) = 242 is the maximum number of moves, if none of the pieces could be blocked. So 218 sounds about right (if you include both sides) but it's mathematically too much for one side alone (which is what is implied by the stalemate comment as both sides can't be in stalemate at once). Anyone know if 109 is the one-sided number (I'd guess not as symmetry doesn't have to be conserved)? Telso 02:59, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

See this web page. Actually 218 is the best found so far and it is for one side (you forgot that pawns could get promoted to other pieces). However the page does not say that 218 is a known maximum - just that it hasn't been improved upon in 40 years. Thus Luming may well be right. Pcb21| Pete 10:58, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

External links to game repositories

Several chess-related articles have external links to sites with many games on file and the "animation" feature that lets the reader see each move without setting up a board. For example, the list of external links at Bobby Fischer includes these two:

There was recently a bit of a ruckus when the owner of the "Unofficial Bobby Fischer Chess Page" added links to his site, which, despite its name, offers animated games by several other players as well as Fischer. (See, for example, the collection of Morphy's games.) You can see some of the resulting discussion at Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress#192.85.50.2, was 69.133.93.199 and at Talk:The Game of the Century.

The broader issue raised is whether and under what circumstances we should link to any or all of these sites. I'm no longer active as a player, so I'm not familiar with any of them, but it appears that all three offer animated games without charge, although chessgames.com has a paid "premium" option. I can't play the games at muljadi.org but that may be some problem unique to my computer. Should all these links go (except for the occasional special circumstance)? If they're to stay, should we include all the sites? give preference to muljadi just because those links were added earlier? randomize among them? My inclination is to include all of them, but I can understand the objection of people like Hadal who commented, in the "Vandalism" discussion, that "Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not merely a collection of external links...." JamesMLane 13:59, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The reason why people are really sensitive about external links is because Wiki is a place which has been frequently abused by spammers who put links to their sites here without making any real contributions to the Wiki. My rule of thumb is that one should not put a link to to their own site unless one makes a significant contribution to Wikipedia. For example, David A Wheeler can put a link to his home page on the pages for the evergreen game and immortal game because he allowed Wikipedia to use the content of those web pages here in the Wikipedia. There are a number of places where people can play through chess games, such as chessgames.com; we should probably have a number of links. As an aside, the "Unofficial Bobby Fischer Chess Page" does not work in Mozilla; this looks really bad when admins go to the site because a lot of them use Mozilla and Firefox. Samboy 18:11, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Hello gang, it's me - the lowly Chuck. Many good points offered here and I am amazed at the dedication among the moderators - if only I had read these discussions before posting my links. I'm certainly not going to promote my links anymore but as we all know, the links at muljadi.org clearly don't work so it may be doing a service to the readers of Wikipedia if someone can remove them instead of sending users to a place they can't use. By the way - that Mozilla issue on my website was my oversight - I don't have that browser so I never tried it; I'm going to get on it. From these discussion I'm thinking it's still not a good idea to add my links. I'll keep an eye on more opinions as they come - see ya.

Having some link or links to game repositories doesn't seem out of place to me. Two or three different sites may very well be able to co-exist peacefully, but ten or so on one page would probably be too much. What bothered me was the other issues brought up around this particular link like overwriting other links, no communication, the description being too much like advertising rather than just a useful title or description. --1pezguy 04:23, Jul 31, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, overwriting the links was my goof. I did try going over to muljadi.org to at least see if the admin could be contacted to fix the web sites because none of the games work - but I didn't see any contact email. As for my own links - I figure I will just move player biographies over to my own site, that way I can be as over zealous as I want - Chess Greats. But I do intend to give Wiki credit and a link back for any information I borrow (I am already linking back to Wiki in four different areas). -- Chuck

Cleanup needed?

I find it disturbing that the first four headings of the Chess article are very well done and all that but then the Subject overview is a horrible, badly categorized mess of links. For example, there are the subjects History of chess, Chess literature, Chess in literature and arts and Chess in music. The history chapter lists literature links and the music chapter is needless because music counts as art. Chess and mathematics is also very closely related to Chess problems and puzzles, especially to Knight's Tour and Eight queens puzzle. There are also topics which have no text, they could be changed to normal links under See also. The list is in my opinion so horribly wrong that I don't know where to begin. I'm tempted to delete the Subject overview altogether but I'd like to hear your opinions first. ;) ZeroOne 12:47, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I don't think just deleting it all is a good idea - those articles probably need to be linked from somewhere, and the chess article seems a reasonable place. But certainly, it could all do with some cleaning up - if you think it can be improved, then by all means, leap in and improve it. Good luck :) --Camembert
OK, I did something then. Didn't delete much, mostly just moved stuff around and created a couple of new sub-headings. I still think it's an improvement. -ZeroOne 22:52, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Edited some more. I'm quite happy with the result. :) What does everyone else think? -ZeroOne 23:39, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

WikiTeX and Chess

A link in article was recently add:

  • WikiTeX chess supports editing chess games directly in Wiki articles.

Any idea how could this be integrated into Wikipedia? --andrejj 17:01, 7 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I would love to use this in articles such as Fork (chess). What we have there is already an editable chess diagram, but the table is large and the image size is large, so I'm ready for a LaTeX replacement. The trouble is, I can't figure out how to use it. I cut and pasted the sample text verbatim, and when I preview the article I don't get a diagram, I just get the text back again. Is there a special trick to using this template? TIA --Fritzlein 20:04, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

"Visual effect" picture is out of place

A translucent chess set arranged for visual effect is "nice" visually but in my opinion totally out of place in a serious chess article.

It's more or less equivalent to placing some imaginary impossible combinations of math symbols in 'Mathematics' article.

I won't edit anything because maybe others won't share this attitude.

To the best of my ability to discern the positions of all of the pieces in the photo, no positions which are theoretically illegal or unreachable from the opening setup are shown. Although I also would strongly discourage both players from pursuing the openings shown, the photo at hand is admittedly just for visual effect. Hence, I see no need to pull it. -OmegaMan

Huge Mess Alert

This article now has some sections duplicated twice. --BadSanta

Duplicated twice... Quadruplicated? --ZeroOne 20:55, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Cleanup done. I had to remove some information from the page; see User:Samboy/Chess zapped to see what I removed from the Chess page. Samboy 02:23, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
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