05-24-2004, 06:14 PM
Oh, the awards that a person doing that successfully, in his life-time, could win...
The theoretical number of possible board-configurations in chess is calculated to be well over the theoretical count of atoms in the universe. The problem of chess is often used to demonstrate how there's things that just can't be done in computing by brute-force (read: generate all possible configurations and then pick from them). The problem is finitely bounded, but that is not to say it is practically solvable.
IIRC, beginning from the start, the number of all possible board-configurations grow exponentially at a factor of around 16. No where near Go, but still adds up very quickly.
The theoretical number of possible board-configurations in chess is calculated to be well over the theoretical count of atoms in the universe. The problem of chess is often used to demonstrate how there's things that just can't be done in computing by brute-force (read: generate all possible configurations and then pick from them). The problem is finitely bounded, but that is not to say it is practically solvable.
IIRC, beginning from the start, the number of all possible board-configurations grow exponentially at a factor of around 16. No where near Go, but still adds up very quickly.