There are also shades and grey areas, we won't see a 0% or 100% strategic template, so it's about where you draw the line. I also like the way Rufus summarized it, although I think the word "might" is important there. I would argue there are exceptions, built-in features Warzone offers that can't be implemented in any template without decreasing its strategic value, as long as it's not already extremely low.

Edited 11/28/2023 14:07:36

(What I said is technically wrong, 0% is possible because you can make a coin flip template, some are already in existence. However, we will never get to 100% due to the nature of the game. You could even argue chess isn't 100% strategic as the game is slightly imbalanced in white's favour.)

Chess is solved some say it has little strategy anyway. Warzone > Chess imo

Chess is not solved and it will never be. There are more possible chess games than atoms in the observable universe. That's why it's such a great choice to test AI ability.

Edit: Chess is being solved. Chess was always solvable but now the game belong to computers, as in the best chess player in the world is not human

Edited 11/28/2023 14:18:54

Doesn't "solved" mean that the one best way to play the game is determined? If chess was solved, we could tell exactly what the best first move is. What is the best first move in chess?

(Spoiler: We will never know the best first move in chess. The computing power required for that is impossible to obtain. If chess was solved, you could show the complete game, from the first move to checkmate from white or forced draw from black (which one of the two the true result is we of course don't know). But you can't show even the first move. And nobody will ever be able to. This is how complex chess is.)

At the very least computers have solved enough of the game for many grandmasters to agree it has changed for the worse. Too much memorization too little strategy. That being said, I don’t play chess, just pointing out that I think Warzone > Chess because Warzone will have more strategy.

Regarding the game of chess, you really can't state any absolutes about its solvability yet. The question is still open. It may be possible to solve the problem with (different) mathematics.

I think the problem is the word "solve". Of course there are positions that the computer can solve, for example by saying it's checkmate in 27 turns. That's because any given position is far less complex than chess in the starting position. This is where we meet mathematical impossibility. Computers are great at solving concrete positions, and will get better and better at that.

Rufus is correct, you can't "prove that's it unprovable", so I should've picked my words more wisely. It's always difficult to prove that something has not happened or is not possible. I hope my demonstration of the complexity of chess hasn't failed to meet its purpose anyways.

@Tacky
I also prefer Warzone over chess, I enjoy it a lot more ;D

Chess is very complex, and calling it 100% solved is incorrect on my part :)

@alex Great minds think alike they say! ;)

you can use logical deduction to figure out your opponent's approximate income and the most likely place for an airlift to arrive and factor that in when you make your orders

Chess is finite and therefore solvable, at least in theory - doesnt mean humans can do it or that the universe even has enough elementary particles to somehow allow us to calculate it.
However, the vast complexity of chess also doesnt immediatly imply that it is beyond our capabilities to solve it, as there could be ways other than brute forcing all possibilities that still allow us to solve it.
Technically the game "who says a higher number" where personA says a number and then personB (higher one wins), has infinite possible moves. Still i think we can quickly determine who is winning that game

I prefer WZ to chess too. Is more flexible. You get a new board every game and completely different games. Chess is usually playing same thing over and over. WZ you stick to principles.

Such problems are really hard to solve using mathematics for the following reason: We don't have tools or methods to compress all the information of a question we try to ask and then translate it to a very constructive framework of mathematical language. You basically have to define moves, positions, winning conditions, etc. as precise as possible, and that is harder than anything you can think of. That's the main reason why something like chess is hard to solve, because we can't even describe its rules in a useful way that would help us to work on solving it.
To give you an example of simplier problem with the same issue: Collatz conjecture.

Chess is solved for all positions with up to 7 pieces and solved for many positions with 8 pieces. As Rufus says, no one knows what the limit of feasibility is here but getting to 9 pieces (let alone 32) is not even remotely possible with current or near-term technology.

It is extremely unlikely but there is a third possibility other than “White wins” or “Black draws” which is that Black wins, i.e. that any first move by a White creates a permanent exploitable weakness. That said, given that draw rates increase continuously for all ratings up to ~3900 FIDE (or whatever we estimate Stockfish is at now) it seems likely that chess is a draw with best play.

I agree, Dan. Think of Chess960. It feels like enormous variety in chess. But it would be super little in Warzone if a template had 960 possible boards. Of course, chess is still far more complicated for fundamental reasons, but that doesn't translate into more enjoyable.

GiantFrog, very interesting point indeed. "Who says a higher number" seems more comparable to solving chess by determining the winning sequence to every possible position, which is useless for the same obvious reason. My basis of reference is determining the perfect (single correct) chess game from the starting position onwards, which I believe is a different thing.

Very interesting, Rufus. I'll research about that to understand that explanation and its implications better.

It never occured to me to take the number of pieces as a basis, Leon, thanks for pointing that out!

Also worth mentioning that you would have to store the answers somehow and, given that there are more possible positions than atoms in the universe, it is not clear how this would be done

I’m leaning towards impossible for the time being but who knows what quantum computing and beyond will allow

I need to make an important reservation after reading up on it: Chess only has more games than atoms in the universe if illegal moves are possible, otherwise it's fewer, even though still an extreme number. However, the game Go has far more possible games than Atoms in the universe (like, it's far out of the range).