Is This Post Essentially Correct?

Current computers, which don't even have the game solved yet, make moves that make zero sense to any human player. These computer moves, one of the key ways you catch a cheat, prepare for something many moves ahead. The importance of these moves suggests the decision space for chess is so much wider than humans really grasp, and that perfect play is so much narrower than we really imagine.

Humans use heuristics to shortcut the need to calculate every possible line. That means we generally overlook quiet preparatory moves that turn out to be essential in the best chess. If chess were shown to be a theoretical draw, while we know human players win more as white than as black, then to me that suggests a few possibilities:

- The overall game tree has more wins for white than for black. Our human deviations from perfectly play may be no better than random, after all.

- Our heuristics are biased toward white. It may be our deviations are far enough from random that they bias in favor of the first player.

- Our heuristics are biased toward decisive outcomes, and that bias hurts black more than white.

When you jump from describing computers playing a "solved" game to chess you seem to be ignoring the fact that chess is not yet solved nor do we know whether given physical constraints chess can be solved.

I don't think it's super important whether or not chess has actually been solved yet for this question. It's just a setup to assume chess is a theoretical draw to ponder why Black is losing more in the real world. I think the conclusion is correct yes, Black loses more because the development disadvantage gives Black less non-losing moves that a fallible human might play.

I just don't get the point of the question though. This is obviously the case whether or not chess is a theoretical draw.

number of atoms in the observable universe : between 10^78 to 10^82

number of possible chess games : between 10^111 to 10^123

i think the white edge means exactly what it is

computers still don't know how much edge white has , but they know it has an edge , lets say its +0.1% , that computer playing by those standards would never lose and would win 1 in 10 games over millions of games

if computers can't figure out the exact number of possible combinations for all possible chess games, its still too early to know what edge white has, but it has some , and will always translate into never losing and winning at x frequency , combinations are just too many to understand

I think OP is basically correct, yes.

The black player has less margin for error than white. It doesn't matter for computers as they won't make errors. Humans make errors, and because the black side has less margin for error, it will hurt them to the tune of worse overall results.

This

The white human will use the opening and variations that he is most familiar with and his opponent will generally be less familiar with, affording an advantage. The perfect playing computer on black would not have that disadvantage.

I've observed for some time that chess is just a much, much, much more sophisticated version of tic-tac-toe.

Even though a child can "master" tic-tac-toe in minutes, the first player still has a huge advantage (a much greater advantage than White has in chess).

When two beginning chess players play each other, I suspect there is virtually no advantage to being White.

If two beginning tic-tac-toe players play each other, I suspect the first player has a massive advantage.

In summary: I think the OP is correct.

(Am I allowed to say that I stream as 'geezerchess' on twitch?)

Since a perfect playing chess computer will never make a move that gives the opponent a forced checkmate (if it is indeed true that two perfect computers always draw), it is almost certainly true that the reason that black loses more often than white in the real world is because it misses all of the moves that the perfect computer could make.

Since there is no such thing as a "perfect chess playing computer, " the entire point is moot. Every game would be a draw if both computers played perfect chess.

My thought is that white's advantage comes from the fact that it has more moves available to it. White can always check the black King first before Black can check the white King. Black's available moves are limited when it is in check. Now many of these checks might be bad moves and White shouldn't play them if it wants to win but at some point, checking the enemy King becomes a good move and that move is made available to White first.

This logic is basically right. I would just say it's not about giving check, but just that white will be first to strike in some way - doing something that causes black to have to compromise their position.

Correspondence chess in general is cheat land. Besides that, the virtual unlimited time and the possibility of using resources like databases, opening books, endgame tables (if I'm not mistaken) makes it the most perfect format that humans (or better stated, cyborgs) will ever play.

For anyone with access to a database of correspondence chess, like chessbase, and filtering for high rated matches only, does white still show an advantage over black?

im dumb as **** but how is chess not close to being solved yet?

is it because there are soo many more lines and ranges have yet to be played? and no solver like poker?

It's not close to solved because of combinatorial math.

What has happened though with games like Chess and Go, is that instead of trying to solve it, they mostly just get good at developing algorithmic positional analysis, and augment it with *enough* depth of calculation to get there.

The "solving" of chess has proceeded by focusing on endgames, and those are progressing, but it's a long way from the starting position.

The possible permutations are too vast for computer hardware as it is now. Right now, chess is solved for when there are up to seven pieces on the board. Eight pieces is considered to be possible, but is already bumping up against the limits of what computers can handle in terms of processing power, memory, and storage space. Each time you add one more piece makes it an exponentially bigger task.

thats really cool its unsolvable then and that even plugging into GTO its still not reliable enough line wise since so many permutations exist

thats cool

Correct. At present chess is practically unsolvable. "GTO" chess ain't happening. However the computers we do have are already so much better than people that there isn't that much motivation to solve chess.

Does chess get stale thn once you are at 2300+ level?

like isnt there a GTO approval for opening and from there the lines to take form that openor into mid and lategame?

Like you play openor X opp responds with openor y and then you know wht they do the lines they are supposed to so now unless they deviate its cut and dry no?

It's more complex than that.

Openings dry up because professional circuit players have an incentive not to take risks, so they often favor drawish lines. If you're not trying to win it all, you're actually doing well to trade off the pieces and let the game peter out every time.

One reason the World Cup is such a great tournament format. Not only is there no arcane Swiss with inscrutable tiebreaks, you can't just draw out your bracket. Someone has to win and someone has to lose.

Dang, now remembering the first time I saw the World Cup online, the 2023 edition with the massive Magnus storyline, it was commentated by Danya and Peter. RIP.

Tic-Tac-Toe is a draw with perfect play, but in a game between two bad players it's far easier to win going first than going second because the other player has a smaller margin of error.

Same thing applies to chess, which is most likely a draw with perfect play, but Black has a much thinner margin of error than White so Black loses more when non-Gods are playing.

No. There's a tournament that started just today called Tata Steel, the players are mostly 2700+, and in the first round three out of the seven games were wins, and another was barely saved by a miracle endgame resource.

There's no GTO in chess. There are lots of openings that are analyzed deeply, sure. But the opening is just that. Still gotta play chess after the opening.