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Can chess be solved? – Rising Entropy

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There are some chess positions in which one player can force a win. Here’s an extremely simple example: White just moves their queen up to a8 and checkmates Black. Some winning positions are harder to see than this. Take a look at the following position. Can you find a guaranteed two-move checkmate for White? And for fun, here’s a harder one, again a guaranteed two-move checkmate, this time by Black: Notice that in this last one, the opponent had multiple possible moves to choose from. A forced mate does not necessarily mean restricting your opponent to exactly one move on each of their turns. It just means that no matter what they do, you can still guarantee a win. (Edit: with best play from White, this is not actually a forced mate.) Forced wins can become arbitrarily complicated and difficult to see if you’re looking many moves down the line, as you have to consider all the possible responses your opponent has at each turn. The world record for the longest forced win is the followin

There are some chess positions in which one player can force a win. Here’s an extremely simple example: White just moves their queen up to a8 and checkmates Black. Some winning positions are harder to see than this. Take a look at the following position. Can you find a guaranteed two-move checkmate for White? And for fun, here’s a harder one, again a guaranteed two-move checkmate, this time by Black: Notice that in this last one, the opponent had multiple possible moves to choose from. A forced mate does not necessarily mean restricting your opponent to exactly one move on each of their turns.

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