This is tangentially related to crypto. I've been reading A.K. Dewdney's I was glancing through the chapters on complexity, computabilty, and minimax trees, and I got to wondering something: how many possible games of chess are there? I know that it has to be a finite number, but I'm not sure how to go about finding this number. Any pointers would be appreciated.

It doesn't seem to me that this _can_ be readily calculated in any reasonable amount of time. It's not a simple (realtively) combinatorial problem: the configuration of the board at any given point limits the legal moves in an extremely nontrivial way. I believe I can get you as far as the second move, though: I make it to be twenty-one possible openings and twenty-one responses. -- Lefty (lefty@apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:.