I have played a lot of chess games. The thing that always bothered me was that bloody clock. It looks as if the game is a game about who can think the fastest and it makes one nervous. Now, I know it's part of the game and this gives it charm too. But what if there was no pressure of time? Could ...
Chess has been around thousands of years. Even with the help of modern computers, people have not figured out whether 1 e4 is better or worse than 1 d4.
If the opponent gets infinite time as well, the obvious answer to the question in the title is 'no'. You might want to edit to make the title match the text.
@jf328 Assume some moves arbitrary. You can assign chances and make the next move based on this chance. You can use a supercomputer to compute all possible moves of your opponent.
@DescheleSchilder Either "Will a player always win if they get infinite time and the opponent doesn't?" or "will games be perfect (and most likely a draw) if both players get infinite time?".
Can I use information from the outside world? I would first delay making my first move for a few billion years to see if the game is solved in the meantime.
With "infinite" time (and the top priority being perfect play), the first player will simply wait the required number of years/decades/centuries to completely analyze the game and then make the indicated first move.
@DescheleSchilder That's "And" the second player can do this too. And sure, that's exactly and obviously correct. It is the very definition of perfect play.
is this perhaps answered affirmatively by that tournaments stopped doing adjournments in favour of lower time controls, thus answering (affirmatively) with weaker assumptions?
@Reddmann That is my line of thinking too. Countless games can be played. All can be win or lost. Remise is not necessarily the outcome. I had postal (internet) chess in mind too.
Why limit this to two players trying to play a perfect game? The collective community of human chess players has been trying to do exactly what you're describing for the past five hundred years. We are still below perfect play, although how large the gap is between a perfect player and the best modern engines given correspondence time-controls like 1 week per move, is an open question.
Discussion on question by Deschele Sc…
Discussion on question by Deschele Sc…