this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2025
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

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Sure, playing chess needs intelligence, dedication, and good chess players are smarter than an average person. But it's waaaay exaggerated in movies. I'm a math researcher, and in any movie, my department will be full of chess geniuses. But in reality, only about 10% of them even play chess.

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[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Nah in game terms chess is absolutely a solved game. Some meme edge cases do not invalidate that.

[–] svcg@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 2 points 6 days ago (2 children)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endgame_tablebase#Lomonosov_tablebases

The only argument for "chess is not solved" is because of sheer math number but its a flawed argument as any game with sufficient amount of positions would be considered unsolved.

So for all practical intents and purposes - chess is a solved game but people are too attached to admit it.

[–] svcg@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solving_chess

No, the argument for "chess is not solved" is that unless you can tell me whether or not it is possible for white to force a win, then it is - by definition - not solved.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 0 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Again "unsolvable" through sheer amount of positions at the beginning of the game (at its literally solved at 7 pieces) so this is just a cop out because thats boring as fuck. It's not an interesting game where computational power is the only challenge and not even that much towards the last steps of the game.

[–] OhNoMoreLemmy@lemmy.ml 1 points 5 days ago

What is a game that wouldn't be solvable if you removed most of the pieces and positions?

[–] OhNoMoreLemmy@lemmy.ml 0 points 6 days ago

I mean, yes. Any game with only a small number of possible moves can be solved with brute force trial and error.

All unsolved games must have a "sufficient amount of positions" that brute force isn't an option, and enough complexity that there's not a cute maths trick to solve it despite the number of moves.

Chess is one of these unsolved games.