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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 1899751" data-attributes="member: 3424">Actually, from a game theory perspective, chess is classified as a two-player game with perfect information and no randomness. One of the simplest examples of this type of game is tic-tac-toe, also known as noughts and crosses.Game theory states that there is always an optimal strategy for such games, and if both players adopt the optimal strategy, the game will always end in the same way (although individual games will not necessarily have the same sequence of moves): either one player will always be able to force a win*, or the game will always end in a draw (as is the case with tic-tac-toe). If one player adopts a strategy other than the optimal, he may end up with a worse outcome (e.g. he may lose instead of drawing, or lose or draw instead of winning).The only attraction for chess is that nobody has discovered the optimal strategy for it yet. And given the complexity of the game, it is likely that nobody ever will. I seem to recall that the total number of possible chess positions is more than the total number of atoms in the universe. If so, no single mind or computer will ever be able to contain the entire optimal strategy.* A simple example of a game in which one player will always be able to force a win is as follows: There are twenty-one sticks on a table, and two players take turns to remove one to four sticks. The one who picks up the last stick loses. The player who goes second will always be able to force a win if he picks up 5 minus the number of sticks that the first player picked up in his last turn.</blockquote>

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