Does chess yield the largest meaningful finite number?

Is the total number of moves in chess, the largest meaningful finite number? Suppose we extend this to the largest number of positions that can occur in chess provided there is only one Black and one White King.

If we eliminate the requirement of the fifty move rule, how does this number vary from one where there is a fifty move rule?

Let us further stipulate that there is almost an "infinite" number of starting positions e.g. we could envision a starting position with 31 White pawns and 31 Black pawns or one where there are six Queens to a side. Yet even with an almost infinite number of starting positions the total number of legal positions that can arise is finite i.e. this is an exact number.

If I liked to torture computers I would require them to identify every legal position in chess and all its variants! I suspect that this number is at least 1X10 raised to the power of 1000.

brah just shut up and stop being pretenious, ok. Go watch cookie monster or something. 

Seriously cookie monster is that the best you can do, I would said something like go watch the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show now that is a show.

it still does not defeat the purpose of you being pretenious. Also, cookie monster is the least pretenious thing, therefore i concluded that you can learn the most from him. Thank you brah

"Chess and all it's variants" is vastly imprecise. For instance, you could come up with a variant featuring a board of infinite size.

Otherwise, if you want some mindbendingly large numbers that somehow relate to the physical world, then you might calculate the rough amount of Planck cubes within the Universe, then the rough amount of Planck frames it has existed for, and then do some permutations involving those numbers (like, how many possible results can you get when ordering all Planck frames in all possible ways while in any Plack frame all the Planck cubes could be ordered in any way possible?). Good luck.

lmao, your standard rating is really low brah. Do not talk to me again brah

I think a value called Graham's number is the highest meaningful number. It's pretty interesting, actually. :)

That depends on how you define "meaningful." If u considered something like, say, the number of celestial objects in the Milky Way, then that would probably be larger than the number of possible chess moves.

It currently might be the largest(?) finite number which is constructed by a specific algorithm, but it does not really relate directly to the physical Universe or any of it's properties in any way (except that it was conceived by beings who happen to inhabit this universe).

On the other hand, when trying to answer a question like "how many possible results can you get when ordering all Planck frames in all possible ways while in any given Plack frame all the Planck cubes could be linearly ordered in any way possible?", you take the largest available numbers pertaining to the physical extent of time and space of the Universe, and do permutations on them to get as huge of a resulting number as possible.

googol is brah

"Celestial object" is not well-defined, and "possible chess moves" isn't either. Still, if every atom of matter in the whole Universe was to be considered a separate "celestial object", it might still be fewer than what you meant by "all possible chess moves".

stop being pretentious brah. Go read a book that entails the premise of expotentially the vastness of the vacuum known as brah space brah it is immeasurably the brah amount of brah noah's ark must read brah that ony one God can grant mercy brah. do understand what i am saying brah. Also, go watch gundam unicorn it is a pretty good show

Grahm's number is part of a solution to an actual problem... I suppose it's more conceptual than "relating directly to the physical universe" but it's more than some big number generated by some arbitrary algorithm.

Title of the "largest finite number which is constructed by a specific algorithm" doesn't really mean anything by itself anyway... it's simple to make a bigger number (but not a bigger more meaningful number).

Actually, the number of atoms in the universe is "only" about 1x10 to the 78th or 82nd power; the total number of chess moves, more like 1x10 to the 1000 power.

Skewes' number is bigger (the one without assuming the Riemann Hypothesis) 10^10^10^963 is a lot bigger than 10^10^3.

Graham's number is greater than all of the Planck lengths in the universe.  There literally isn't room in the universe to write it out in numerical form.  

An important point is that if we had a universe of finite size and infinite age that is static, each piece fits in a cube whose side is Planck's length, the board is the universe in three dimensions, the pieces move at the speed of light, no piece can cross the same square twice on one move, only pawns can promote, they can only move forward, no piece can transmute during the game, there is no fifty move rule, but three fold repetition is prohibited, is there an exact time for one observer to complete every position on this board?

I'm not sure what you mean precisely by "the total number of chess moves", and where the 10^1000 number would come from.

The total number of legal positions is considered to be on the order of 10^47, while the total number of possible distinct games, assuming 35 possible moves per position in average and an average game length of 80 ply, amounts to 35^80 = ~1^123.

You obviously did not notice the permutation task I gave...

The number of squares on the chessboard is 64; the number of possible linear arrangements of these 64 squares is 64! = ~10^89. Do 10^89 squares fit onto a 64-square chessboard...?

Now permutate all the Planck cubes currently present within the Universe, then permutate all the Planck frames that passed since the Big Bang, and then combine these numbers to arrive at the result...

An average game length where we seek to maximize the total number of moves would be more like a trillion plies in an average game. One indication of the complexity of chess would be to have a computer algorithm written to determine the total number of Knight moves that are possible from the starting position i.e. we permit only Knight moves. My guess if the three-fold repetition rule applies (including the requirement it be the same Knight) the total number of positions is over 1 billion.