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<blockquote data-quote="lewpuls" data-source="post: 7730800" data-attributes="member: 30518">In puzzles such as chess (and any other so-called &quot;game&quot; that is two player and perfect information), you can assume your opponent is a perfect player, and play accordingly.&nbsp; If the opponent is not perfect, you'll gain.&nbsp; This is maximizing your minimum gain, which is the basis of the Mathematical Theory of Games.This is no different in principle than Tic-Tac-Toe, which as you all know is a draw when played perfectly. The difference is that chess is so complex that no human can solve it, though we can solve cut-down versions of chess (chess problems). Checkers is much less complex, such that Marion Tinsley more or less solved it. Checkers has also been brute-forced solved by the Chinook program (as I understand it, a database of all possible positions and the move that is most likely to result in a win from each position).When you have more than two players, then uncertainty of player intention comes into it. (I think! Certainly practically.)It has been demonstrated that a perfectly played game of chess will always end the same way, but the demonstration doesn't show whether that's a white win, black win, or draw.&nbsp; You might say, player intention only matters when players make mistakes.Uncertainty is NECESSARY to a game, otherwise you have a puzzle with an always-correct solution (even if humans cannot figure out that solution). Nonetheless, a great many hardcore gamers dislike a lot of uncertainty - notice the popularity of games such as chess, go, checkers, and other abstracts. An RPG forum would be atypical of hardcore gamers as a whole, of course. (And note, video gamers far outnumber RPGers - RPGs are a fairly small segment of gaming.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="lewpuls, post: 7730800, member: 30518"] In puzzles such as chess (and any other so-called "game" that is two player and perfect information), you can assume your opponent is a perfect player, and play accordingly. If the opponent is not perfect, you'll gain. This is maximizing your minimum gain, which is the basis of the Mathematical Theory of Games. This is no different in principle than Tic-Tac-Toe, which as you all know is a draw when played perfectly. The difference is that chess is so complex that no human can solve it, though we can solve cut-down versions of chess (chess problems). Checkers is much less complex, such that Marion Tinsley more or less solved it. Checkers has also been brute-forced solved by the Chinook program (as I understand it, a database of all possible positions and the move that is most likely to result in a win from each position). When you have more than two players, then uncertainty of player intention comes into it. (I think! Certainly practically.) It has been demonstrated that a perfectly played game of chess will always end the same way, but the demonstration doesn't show whether that's a white win, black win, or draw. You might say, player intention only matters when players make mistakes. Uncertainty is NECESSARY to a game, otherwise you have a puzzle with an always-correct solution (even if humans cannot figure out that solution). Nonetheless, a great many hardcore gamers dislike a lot of uncertainty - notice the popularity of games such as chess, go, checkers, and other abstracts. An RPG forum would be atypical of hardcore gamers as a whole, of course. (And note, video gamers far outnumber RPGers - RPGs are a fairly small segment of gaming.) [/QUOTE]

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