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This is tangentially related to crypto. I've been reading A.K. Dewdney's _The New Turning Omnibus_ recently to refresh my memory of all that stuff I learned in undergrad that I'm going to see again on the Comp Sci GRE shortly. :-) Anyway, 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.

First, I think there are a finite number of games only if all stale-mates are are required to terminate.

There is that curious rule that ends a game when the same board position occurs three times in the course of the game. I wonder if there were any real cool endgames where the underdog was able to manipulate the overdog into repeating the position three times? Peter Wayner * 4129 Roland Ave. #1B, Baltimore, MD 21211-2038 410-366-1452