[FOM] Checkers is a draw

[Vladimir Sazonov]

Quoting joeshipman at aol.com Sat, 28 Jul 2007:

> If you are only a weak chessplayer, you still probably have enough
> experience to "know" that removing White's Queen from the initial
> position ensures a Black win (in this case, a mathematical proof is
> conceivable within a decade or two making reasonable assumptions about
> the development of computers, but the knowledge of chessplayers
> concerning this fact would not be made much more certain by such a
> proof).

It is unclear what do you mean. Or I missed something from previous posts?

Not certain because too long proofs may have errors, or computers are, 
in principle, not absolutely reliable? Or because some of chess players 
might have no idea at all of what is a mathematical proof?

I guess that not many of us made thorough check of the proof of Great 
Fermat Theorem. We might have no knowledge how it was proved (what is a 
serious lost), but we believe to the experts. Of course, having no 
knowledge on the details of proof we hardly could seriously use the 
(quite "certain") knowledge of proof existence. Likewise, chess player 
knowing only on the existence of a proof that whites win will not 
become a better player for whites. But the details of the proof might 
probably help in the playing practice, but also hardly, if too complex.


Vladimir Sazonov


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