How many chess games are possible?

The Shannon number, named after Claude Shannon, is an estimated lower bound on the game-tree complexity of chess of 10120, based on about 103 initial moves for White and Black and a typical game lasting about 40 pairs of moves.

Did you also know there are over 9 million different possible positions after three moves each. There are over 288 billion different possible positions after four moves each. The number of distinct 40-move games is far greater than the number of electrons in the observable universe.

Leave a Comment

Contact Us

CONTACT US We would love to hear from you. Contact us, or simply hit our personal page for more contact information

Not readable? Change text. captcha txt

Start typing and press Enter to search