what is the probability that the same game is repeated in chess?

Answer 1

Part of the beauty in chess is that no two games are the same, or so they claimed.

The openings could be the same as they are well analyzed. Making a different move during this stage is often inferior and can be capitalized by your opponent.

It is usually in the middle game where one of the players will try to seize an advantage and hence a game of chess is not repeated.

I am not an expert in this game. My opinion is based on the countless games I have gone through and no two are the same.

Not unless a game is staged between the players!

Answer 2

It is very low. However, it is plausible that through out history tens of thousands of games have been played the exact same way. There are limited moved because of the nature of the pieces and the board. The number of games that are possible is limited as well because of this.

Another game, GO, has so many different possible moves, some of which in a rigorous analysis of the probability would be ignored because they are fullish has been played for thousands of years. Some people believe that there have only been two or three games during this time that have been identical.

Consider that in chest the opening move, you have 20 options. in Go you have 361.

Computers, running matching learning programs based on probabilities are capable of betting the best humans at chest, e.g., Big Blue. However, the best GO algorithms right now will be defeated all the time by an intermediate Go player.

There is a type of play in Go called a Ko. A Ko is a repetitive capture of a stone and can last into infinitum. This situation does not arise in chest. The Ko, along with many other things are what make Go such an interesting game for not only players but for probabilist and computer scientists working in machine learning.


The probability of a chess game being repeated is very small, but it is considerably larger than GO.

Answer 3

It depends on the number of moves it takes to reach checkmate. As the amount of moves to reach a mate increase then the probability of a repeated game decreases exponentially.

Answer 4

Nearly 0, because almost every game is unique. But of the tens of millions of games that have been played since the game was invented, at least 100 have been similar. The probability of the king pawn being the opening move nears 1.