A Perfect Chess Game
Juvencio Parise
What you're about to see is probably the strongest evidence that we are, in fact, living in the Matrix. At this point, I guess the only question remaining is if they'd rather have us call them "Magnus Carlsen" and "Hikaru Nakamura" or simply Agent Smith.
Every now and then, I win a great game, one that I think there's no way could be improved. Proud of myself, I hit the Game Review button. In a matter of seconds, I get a detailed, move-by-move report that proves, without a shadow of a doubt, that I'm an idiot.
For those who don't know, that little number you get after you review a game is called the CAPS score. It's a measure of how close you were to playing a game like Stockfish, the strongest chess engine today. The closer to 100, the more precise you were.
To put it in perspective, let's look at Carlsen, the Nordic half-man-half-GOAT chess god. Chess pieces love him. His rivals fear him. His average CAPS score over the last year? Currently sitting at 88.76, according to his Insights. Yes, engines can be brutal.
Now, different from my shameful games or Carlsen's average game, we're talking about perfect play. These are all games with a 100 CAPS score. And yes, for this analysis, I used the mighty Stockfish 15 on Chess.com. I also set the depth to 30, so this is the most critical the engine could be.
We all know how teenagers spend way too much time at the computer these days. When Carlsen was a teenager, however, he decided to be a computer. Nine years before becoming the World Champion, young Carlsen played this beauty against then-IM J Deepan Chakkravarthy.
This might shock some people, but there was a time when people played chess without consulting the computer. Old-timers believe that those good old days were the golden era of chess. True, people had to think for themselves and couldn't accuse others of cheating by using computer assistance. But we also missed the chance to see Siegbert Tarrash doing a TikTok dance to promote his perfect game against Georg Marco. Which is another plus, actually. Maybe that was the golden era of chess...
Now, it's one thing to get a high-accuracy game when you're playing a quiet game against someone much weaker than you. But to get a 100 CAPS score against a grandmaster like GM Loek van Wely in a tactical game is something that probably only Nakamura can pull off. And believe it or not, he did it even without the help of his Twitch chat spamming emotes. Now that's impressive.
You should start by playing the solid King's Gambit. After 2.f4, you're practically halfway there. You should then proceed to sacrifice your queen and, four moves later, checkmate your opponent in the middle of the board. Easy.
Hi guys, recently I've become very interested in the topic of the perfect chess game- a hypothetical chess game in which the best moves are played by both sides. Obviously, the result of this game is very speculative- many people argue that it would end in a draw, while others believe white would win.
As I understand it, in the perfect game the only way to come up with the best move is through brute force till the end result of the game; both sides must evaluate each move in this manner: if after this move is played, if both sides play the best possible moves (evaluated in the same manner) until the end of the game, will the end result be the best possible result I could attain. Therefore, my question is:
1. Because chances are many different moves from both sides lead to the best end result (not sure how I came to this conclusion), wouldn't chance favor that there are a multitude of "perfect games", rather than just one?
I love this topic. Thanks for posting. You've asked some interesting questions. Most people are pretty dismissive of the perfect play outcome being anything other than a draw. It's nice to see someone having a more open mind about it, so let me address your two questions.
On the first you are absolutely correct. The point can be illustrated with the far simpler game of tic-tac-toe, at most nine moves long in which there are only a few thousand different games, as opposed to Shannon's number for chess. You probably know that if both players play tic-tac-toe perfectly the game is bound to be a draw: neither can force a win without the opponent erring. But there are many different ways this can be done. For example, the first move doesn't have to be in the centre. Even if you could force a win fron the start, as you can from many tic-tac-toe or chess game positions there might be several ways to do this. They are all equally good, although computers tend to be programmed to choose the fewest moves to victory against best play.
On the second point, it is pretty clear that having the first move is an advantage in both tic-tac-toe and chess. So on that basis I think it is highly unlikely that the perfect chess game is a win for black. It would imply that the opening position is a 'zugzwang' situation and that somehow every one of the 20 possible opening moves puts white in a worse position than he starts in; that the best move, if it were legal, would be to do nothing. Put to one side the amusing fact that, since the position is symmetrical, black would then wish to do the same, resulting in stalemate. Suppose we make a special dispensation, only for white, to effectively swap pieces at the start of the game. We can consider, with the simplest of probability calculations, how likely that is to be optimal, without bringing our (perhaps ultimately flawed) human knowledge of chess into it. If we have no reason to believe that any one of the now 21 possible board positions after the opening opening move is the best one then each one must have an equal chance of being the best. If it's better to play as black then doing nothing on your first move as white has to be better than every alternative. But there is only a 1 in 21 chance that this is the case. This translates naturally enough into the probability that, given that one or the other player can force a win it is black that can do it, just under 5%.
At around 25:00 =6L4yA-mGtAI International Master Vitaly Neimer discusses opening moves in the context of the latest computer chess engines, giving g4 as an example of an opening move that creates weaknesses for white. Every indication is that not all opening moves are like this, so our knowledge somewhat strengthens the likelihood that, if anything, it's advantage white. The main question is whether or not this advantage is enough to force a win.
I have heard it said that in checkers it is better not to have to make the first move. In fact, like tic-tac-toe this game has been 'solved' and it turns out that that perfect lines of play result in a draw. Nonetheless it is interesting to apply the above argument to checkers. There are seven possible opening moves in checkers giving the a priori probability of doing nothing being better than all of them as 1/128. But there may be reasons to suppose that, not withstanding the game's stale solution, the opening position has advantageous properties. None of your pieces can be captured, for example. Whatever the case really is or has been in checkers (the computer-aided solution of the game renders such arguments moot) the prevailing view in chess is strongly to the contrary, suggesting that the 1 in a million a priori estimate would be an overestimate of the chances of black having the advantage, whether it is a critical one or not in the final analysis.
A perfect game of chess is always a draw. This is what I have discovered when matching Houdini against Houdini. If you match a very strong player against an equally strong player, the result will likely be a draw.
Chess is a game of errors. A good chess player recognizes and takes advantage of the errors. White, by having the first move, probably makes the first error. Therefore, the perfect game of chess would have black recognizing white's error first and capitalizing upon it:)
In my opinion, a perect game of chess is impossible to know for sure, at least right now. In order for a perfect game of chess to be figured out, we need a computer that can analize every single possible outcome in a game of chess, and find the best move order untill to end of the game. But yet again, finding the "perfect game" or best move order is really an opinion that theoretically cannot be proven. Even though almost anyone can agree that e4 or d4 is a much better first move than a4 or h4, it gets alot more complicated then that. This is where many computers flaw, and why humans can beat computers. computers can make mistakes along the line, but usually their miskates are very far down the line (20 move or more) and besides Super GM's, humans cannot see 20+ moves. And they can make positional mistakes as well, based on the way they were programed. basically, since a computer was originally programed by a human, it too can make mistakes (yet, a lot less then humans do).
Another major thing, is that if chess was, at perfect play, a win for white, then chess would be invalidated as a game, at least at the GM level, which in turn would make chess lessly played in the lower levels, and chess in turn would become less popular professonally (yet still played alot for fun at lower levels). Yet again, the same thing would happen if GM's could memorize and perfect a forced draw from move one.
In perfect chess game where each player plays best move given the situation, will result in white winning. White has advantage of making the first move and black will always respond to it, even though response will be best.
At present there is no way to determine what makes "a perfect game". The very best players often win/lose games between them, and many super-GM draws have multiple inferior moves--enough on each side to neutralize each other. So you can't take human games as examples of perfection.
c80f0f1006