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Re: How Many Games of Chess?
----------
| From: Lefty <[email protected]>
| To: <[email protected]>
| Subject: Re: How Many Games of Chess?
| Date: Friday, April 01, 1994 9:31AM
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| >This is tangentially related to crypto. I've been reading A.K. Dewdney's
| >I was glancing through the chapters on complexity,
| >computabilty, and minimax trees, and I got to wondering something: how
| >many possible games of chess are there? I know that it has to be a finite
| >number, but I'm not sure how to go about finding this number. Any
| >pointers would be appreciated.
|
| It doesn't seem to me that this _can_ be readily calculated in any
| reasonable amount of time. It's not a simple (realtively) combinatorial
| problem: the configuration of the board at any given point limits the legal
| moves in an extremely nontrivial way.
|
| I believe I can get you as far as the second move, though: I make it to be
| twenty-one possible openings and twenty-one responses.
|
| --
| Lefty ([email protected])
| C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:.
|
|
|
I seem to remember from way back in high school that the number of
potential moves by the third set of moves is on the order of billions
of legal moves. I am also pretty sure that it is not exponential but a
factoral growth. I don't think that it is possible to determine every
possible game.
Mike
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Mike Markley || The opinions here do not represent the
[email protected] || opinions of my employer. Attempts to
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"I want to look at life, In the available light"
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