Created by the author using GIMP and freely available images.
Ever since Nenad Petrović, grandmaster of chess composition, published his 218 move composition in 1964, people have tried to come up with a better one. Last month, I joined the hunt and, being a computer scientist, I decided to settle this question once and for all, using computers. You can give it a try yourself. Try to find a position with more moves than the one below.
Spoiler: You won't.
Reachable chess position with 218 moves for White, published by Petrović in 1964.
...but how can we know for sure?
By checking all approximately 8.7x10^45 reachable chess positions?
Yeah that's not gonna happen...
That's 8.7 billion billion billion billion billion and it's enough to scare even the mightiest of supercomputers. In fact, cracking AES-128 encryption would be easier.
Fortunately, we can use the power of Math!
... continue reading