Boring Chess Trivia

There are 20 possible first moves in chess for white and 20 possible first moves for black, giving 400 possible combinations already, for just the bloody start.

Each player has 27 options for his or her second move, bringing the total number of combinations for the game thus far up to 71,852.

After the third move this jumps to around 9,000,000 possible game situations.

After the fourth move, 315 billion.

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Sigh.  Thinking three moves ahead or several billion?

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Estimated possible games - 10^126.

Estimated number of electrons in the universe - 10^79.

OMG, no wonder I can't win.

E@L's  Gameknot.com ranking is in green. It looks like the stock market on Thursday...  Interesting thing is that as he played more and more on-line tournament games against higher rated opponents (gray line), or more appropriate opponents such as those of his purported ranking, his took a nose-dive... Funny that.

Other boring numbers trivia is from...



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White(Murphy)
1. P--K4 (b) ...

(b) The primary cause of all of White's subsequent difficulties.

Samuel Beckett, Murphy, Novels of Samuel Beckett I, pp145-6.

Love that quote. From the very word go we are doomed to ever escalating complexity...

As in chess, so in life.

E@L