@whatstatersprecious@lemmy.world
2026-09-06 03:53 UTC
It’s not a technicality. We’re discussing whether chess is a “solved game” or not.
That’s a much different standard than whether Stockfish can reliably beat Magnus Carlsen. Of course the engines are better than humans. They have been for a long time at this point.
Chess is not a solved game. If there was a bot that could provably always draw, that would mean it’s solved (as a draw). To be clear, I’m not saying that the bot would just have a perfect drawing record - I’m saying that it literally could never lose, even when playing against the absolute best possible moves.
Replies (1)
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@Doomsider@lemmy.world 2026-09-06 05:56
"To fully solve chess you wouldn’t necessarily have to model every possible game situation; it might also be possible to discover an algorithm that provably can achieve at least a draw no matter what. " To which I replied we already have an algorithm that can do that. Current algorithms can already beat all players. So no, we were not discussing that. Speaking of a draw, (I know, not what he or you were actually saying) apparently you can set the “contempt factor” on advanced engines like stockfish to get the program to be more likely to accept draws.