How Many Games of Chess?

[Jim Gillogly]

I was hoping this thread would die quickly, since it's wildly off-topic.
However... the tightest bound on the number of different positions (more
interesting to us (former) chess programmers than different games) that
I've seen is about 2.3 * 10^49, due to Tim W. Smith in 1991.  Previously
we were seeing numbers like 10^120.  Smith used Huffman-like position
codes to demonstrate the bound.

I strongly suggest the discussion move off to rec.games.chess, where the
question comes up frequently.

	Jim Gillogly
	10 Astron S.R. 1994, 19:30