Chess board of information.

Chapter 15: chess board of information

The next day after college Jin decided to call Alex while walking towards his home.

*Ring*

*Ring*

*Ring*

" Hey Alex what's up?" Jin asked Alex.

‹Nothing much and you? Why did you call me now? Don't tell me that the reason you called me is because you don't have a friend to talk to? That's sad.› Alex mocked Jin who just sighed.

" No I want to talk about 'that' place." Jin told Alex . The other side of the call seems to have frozen down for some time but after few seconds it went back to normal.

‹I see well then let's talk.› Alex told Jin and hanged up the call.

' I don't think he realized it but his acting isn't much helpful. Trying to act as if his composure got shaken to gain my sympathy was a good trick but it won't work on me.' Jin thought and he looked ahead and saw himself arriving at his destination.

"Welcome home me." he greeted himself in the place he calls 'home' and entered the room.

After doing so he decided to walk towards the kitchen to check if he still has the groceries available. He opened the fridge and saw that it was not empty but wasn't full either but was enough to go for a day and night.

"Welp time to clean this place up." he told himself and wore a different set of clothes, covers his face with a piece of cloth and started to clean it.

After a 30 minutes of cleaning he finishes to clean the kitchen, dining hall and 2 bed rooms.

"Now time to get myself clean." he walked towards the bath room and puts his cloths down.

He starts the shower and let's the water to the job which it's good at: cleaning.

After 5 minutes he gets out of the shower,wears his the cloths he found near his hands.

He wore a royal-blue colored pants and pinch black colored turtleneck shirt.

He looked at the fridge and saw that he had a chicken and some broccoli, onion's , carrots, mushrooms. He checked the drawer and saw that he had some rice left , atlest 500 grams of it. He gathered all of them and placed them on the table. Now it's time to Cook!

He first used a rice cooker and poured the 250 grams rice in it with some water and let's the rice cooker do it's work.

He looks at the vegetable's and decides that he needs to start cutting those said vegetables. So he takes the knife and the first thing he did was dicing the onions, mushrooms, and carrots into small pieces or shreds.Then he starts heating up a pan with some oil and starts frying the onions until they became lightly browned. He then adds the mushrooms and carrots, and starts cooking until fragrant and the vegetables are softened. After the vegetable's became soften he slowly add's the chicken to make sure that the hot oil doesn't jump around and he gets himself a burn mark after that he then allow it to cook for a few minutes until the it gets warmed through. He then adds the cooked rice and season it with some salt and pepper. He reduced the heat and continue to cook for another 5-10 minutes until everything is flavored and combined.

" Mushroom rice finished. " he said to himself and decides that he need something else for more flavor but it didn't come to his mind.

" Oh! " he slams him right hand on the palm of his left hand. " Lemon would do the work." he says to himself and starts looking for the necessary ingredients.

" Found it." he said and takes the 5 ripe and yellow lemon's. He then starts looking for the sugar jar.

" Found it!" he said and takes the jar and places it on the table.

" Time to cook." he said.

Firstly he Cuts the lemons in halves and starts squeezing out the juice into a jug.Then he adds a tea spoon of sugar so that he can make the lemon juice sweeter. He then mixes the lemon juice and sugar thoroughly.

" *Huff* that was some serious work. " Jin said to himself and looks at the foods he made.

" Oh shit...." he noticed that he made a bit too much of a food.

' Welp sharing is caring. ' he thought to himself and pours some lemon juice into a glass. He then surves some rice on a dinner plate.

He grabs tray from one of the drawers. He takes the stuff's and places them on the tray.

He walks towards the the door and exits the house.

He walks towards the next door and knocks on the door. After some minutes a woman wearing hijab walks out.

The had pink pearl colored eyes.,her hair was covered by her hijab. She wore a beautiful kimono,a pink colored one.

"Hello Shima-san." Jin greeted the woman called shima.

The woman nodded her head in response.

" Is there anything I can help you with?" shima asked Jin who nodded his head. Her voice was like a calm gentle wind that can make anyone's day and calm anyone down.

" Yes I accidentally prepared a bit too much of food so if you would be kind enough to have these. They are completely hand made." Jin said.

" I see. Well no problem but I will be feeding you later . Will you accept that?" she told him ,who smiled in response and nodded his head.

" Yes I will . Thank you for accepting this ." he gave her the tray she accepted it gladly. She smiled .

" I will then take my leave. See you at the collage then. Also good luck with Nonohara -san." She said the last part with a grin. Jin just laughed, embarrassed hearing her say that.

"...Yes I guess." Jin brushes his hand with the other one.

" I apologize for making you feel shy. " shima told Jin , seeing his nervous smile.

" No probable actually. Well have a good day." Jin wished her.

" May your days be blessed Allah." she said and Jin walked towards his place ,while shima closed her doors.

••••••

After an hour ,Alex arrived at the house and knocks the door.

"Any one home?~" Alex shouted.

" Be there!" Jin yelled back and arrived at the door step,then opened the door.

"You took your sweet time to get here." Alex told Jin who snorted.

" You took you time to get here also what's in that box?" Jin asked Alex while pointing towards the box in Alex's hand.

" Do you know the rules of chess?" Alex asked with a smirk.

" Huh!" Jin was flabbergasted.

••••••

There is a chessboard in front of me, and I didn't even know the rules for it until about a week ago. And right here, right now, I'm touching actual chess pieces for the first time in my life. Throughout my specialized training with the computer that was given to me by Mr . ryoma ,I had come to understand the depth and fun of chess. It was suggested by ryoma during his one of the call.

"So let's start it seems you have a little of bit of information in your mind huh. " Alex said to him with a grin. He knows that I will lose but he still insisted to play with me. The chess board seemes to be far more advanced than normal. Heck I don't think it's a normal one at all . It looks different.

" This is a advantage chess board which stores all the information in a memory card so that I can play with it when I don't have any work to do which is most of the time. "alex told me. It is quite the advantaged one ,not my type if I am being honest.

•••••••

All the pieces of the chessboard were arranged smoothly.

Jin was sitting in front of me .

"Are you sure you want to keep the black pieces, Jin?" I couldn't help but ask.

Usually, the one who starts with the white pieces has a slight advantage on the board by having the first move and since it is one on one with me being more experienced in chess , it is only fair that he should have the first move due to the fact he doesn't have much experience.Chess can be quite simple for people who have played for a long time, but the stamina to withstand the mental stress is very important, and again, it is

one against one with me being more experienced, so he is at a disadvantage in that as well like I said before.

Does he have some kind of tactics, or is it just overconfidence? If he's really confident that he can beat me that easily, then he's going to suffer a pretty humiliating defeat. But seeing his face, it doesn't look like that. His has quite the serious expression on his face.

Maybe I -"Yes. I think I will be able to play easier with the black pieces, it's not because I'm underestimating you or anything like that. I just like black color more." Did he read my thoughts or something. No that's not possible probably his wild institution. Also what type of reasoning is that supposed to be.

I still didn't quite understand, but if he feels comfortable playing with the black pieces who am I to say otherwise? Also, I am very curious to see if jin is like myself. In fact, a part of me wants him to really be just like me.

According to what aurora said, I am a genius,a once in a century type of genius.

Seeing that Jin was ready, I sent a glance

to the board and activated the memory the saving mode. I decided to start the game by moving my hand to a white pawn. I , in the past was able to beat several machines designed to defeat the chess masters themselves 20 times in a row without losing a single game. The reason for this is that the machines always make the best move, so it is easy to predict the moves the computer will make.

Well, technically, the best chess player in the world is no longer human. In the eyes of many, computers are the best chess players there are. And the reason for this is simple, computers are very good at doing calculations with closed systems.

In terms of calculating the best possible moves on the chess board.

I played with a D4 pawn. E4 pawn is probably the best first move in chess, according to the computers, but I played with D4.

Wasting no time, Jin played with the D5 pawn. I quickly played with a F4 bishop. Jin responded with Knight C6, aiming at my D4 pawn. Without much trouble, I quickly played with E3 pawn, defending D4's pawn.

I am playing with using the "London system" which is a more positional opening. This is an opening where the position is closed, is technically easier to play against engines (computers), and is a type of game that I actually like a lot.

Jin responded with an E6 pawn, followed

by my F3 Knight. Next, Jin played with B6 pawn, and played with the bishop that was F1 to D3.

The game initially began at a very fast pace. Both myself and Jin did not think for even 4 to 5 seconds before making our moves. But I knew that when the game became more complex with the need for that 'thing' to intervene, things would be quite different. For now, it was just both sides developing their pieces.

"Tell me, Alex," Jin spoke suddenly as he moved his bishop from F8 to D6. "The chessboard is finite, and each piece has a finite number of ways to move. In other words, no matter how the pieces are positioned, there are always a finite number of possible moves."

"... You are right, but what exactly do you mean by that, Jin ?" I asked as I moved Knight from F3 to ES.

I was also a little curious where he was going with this. Looking a little at the chessboard, I could tell that ' things' turn to enter the game was coming.

Jin replied while moving his bishop from C8 to A6: "Both white and black pieces can be moved in a similar way. With two moves you can make a few dozen possible positions, and both a computer and a person would be able to evaluate these positions using a certain amount of time."

He was right. I stopped moving the pieces for a while as I looked at him, waiting for him to finish.

I never knew he can talk like that.

Well, we didn't agree on any specific time for the chess game, so technically there was no problem.

"That is of course with only 2 moves. For example, if the number of moves is 10, the number of possible chess games is almost 70 trillion. On average, a chess game has at least 80 moves. There is a very large number of possible 'paths' that the game can take. That's why computers are better than humans at navigating this maze of possibilities and coming up with the best possible move to make at that moment." Jin said. Wow never knew he could say such type of information. Though I think you can find these information if you scroll down in the internet.

Even if I know it is possible to make many moves, still, 70 trillion with only 10 moves? How the hell did he arrive at that number specifically? Though we were taught those things but how did he knew about this? Maybe internet? Who knows.

However, I still couldn't see exactly where he was going with all this, although I have an idea. Keeping that in my head I made the Queen's E2 move. Jin quickly played the bishop from A6 to D3, taking my bishop that was on that square. For the first time since the game began, a piece was taken. It looked like he wanted to exchange both bishops. Without wasting any time, I took Jin's bishop with the Queen, and it was at this point that I realized that the game was about to get more turbulent. The moment for 'that thing' to get into action was proving to be closer and closer. From this moment on, I looked at the chessboard more seriously than before, looking for the

possible traps that Jin might be planning to make.

As Jin made the Rookie to protect his King, he spoke again: "When a good chess player evaluates dozens of different positions, the computer evaluates thousands or even millions of different configurations. But that raises a good question that I wanted to ask you." He said to me.

I moved Knight from G1 to E2 while I looked at Jin.

He answered while moving Knight from F6 to H5,

touching Bishop from F4, "Would it be possible for

a computer to calculate all possible chess matches

in such a way that it would be impossible to beat

it?" That was a very interesting question.

This is clear for normal people. I myself does not fall into that category. After thinking for some time, I moved my eyes upward to answer Jins question.

"The theoretical answer is yes," as soon as I started, I noticed him starting to look at me, "However, i don't fit into that, I myself am capable of beating the best computers we currently have," I answered with total confidence

in my tone of voice. This is called confidence not arrogance.

That was a very interesting question.

"Well... using the modern rules there is a finite number of rounds with a finite number of possible bids. In other words, there is a finite number of possible chess games, and having a finite number of games means that chess is

what people call a [closed game], and as you said

before, it would be theoretically possible for a computer to assemble a list of all possible games." Jin moved his pawn from C7 to C5 when he finished saying that.

"However," he began to speak again, "if in 10moves there are about 70 trillion possible games, how many chess games are possible in total?" He asked.

"Hm...if I am not wrong for normal people it's impossible impossible to calculate, isn't it?" I said as I stroked my own hair. I could understand some of what jin was trying to do, it was my turn to play a little . So I moved the pawn from C2 to C3.

"Well, not exactly." he replied. "If we count all the

games imaginable, we would have around."

"10¹²³ possible chess games" . Both Jin and myself spoke at the same time.

I am confused for the fact that someone who just entered the world of chess for only a week knows this much but it seems he misunderstood my confused face.

"For comparison, there are 10^80 atoms in the universe. A computer calculating a million moves per second would take about 10^90 years to calculate all those moves. That's long enough for part of the black holes at the end of the universe to evaporate." He said.

"Even if we wanted to use better computers to enable such computation, there simply isn't enough computing power for that. If humans ever find a strong solution to chess, it would take a revolution in computing first," he said again.

I see. In other words, what he means is that it is

impossible to solve chess mathematically.

"yes but maybe in the future there will be computer that will be able to do this impossible." Jin said.

"Even if we wanted to use better computers to enable such computation, there simply isn't enough computing power for that. If humans ever find a strong solution to chess, it would take a revolution in computing first," I said..

"And what I just said doesn't even take into account storing that computation. The end position table for 7 pieces has about 140 terabytes of data. And setting up a similar table with 8 pieces would take 5 petabytes (5000 terabytes) of information. In other words, given our current technology, it is inconceivable to compute and

store every possible chess set." He said. Well now I know that he made sure to take all the information from a source so that he could talk with me about it. But he isn't going to the main issues in hand. He wanted to talk about 'that place'.

" Hm are you good with computer's maybe?" I asked him.

" Nope those are just basic stuff." do people now a days think that's basic stuff or what? I don't think that's a basic stuff. Though I am not going to question it.

"so tell me...," Jin moved c5 to c4," Is this yuki person you talked about knows about your existence?" he asked me. Now he came to the question that I wanted to know.

There are 2 options here. Take the queeen or back the queen. I moved the queen from D3 to E2.

Without wasting any time taking my bishop using his knight and I took the same piece with my pawn from E2. He exchanged his knight for my bishop. My king is well protected and currently I have 8 pawns , 2 knight , 2 rook ,king and queen.

"yes she knows about my existence. Also she seems to see me in different light that others." I told him.

He moved his pawn from H7 to H6. "What do you mean by 'different light' ?" Jin asked me.

There is this sinerio where ,I moved my knight from E5 to G4 and let the knight be taken and attain the pawn on H6.

After some thinking I decided to play queen at H5 and Jin responded with knight from B8 to D7.

"so does this Ayase person loves yuki or not? " Jin asked me.

"Yes he does. Though I would call it sick love if I am being honest with you." I said as I took his knight with mine and he used his queen to take my knight.

"i see. That is a good. So when the next time I call you, be ready." he told me .

" What do you mean?" I asked him as I moved my pawn from G3 to G4.

" Nothing much I just have some plan in my head so let's keep playing." he told me as he moved his queen from D7 to B5.

The 2 of us started playing,I used 'that thing' to keep up with him. This thing is called 'flow'. Its a state of extreme focus. It's my main weapon which helped me survive in 'that' place. There are only chosen few who can enter in flow in command. And I am one of those chosen few.

•••••••

Both Jin and Alex started playing more seriously than they were doing before. Alex was in 'flow'. In this state his thought process,speed and accurateness increases for more than of a normal person.

Alex was taking only 2 to 3.5 second's to make a move meanwhile Jin was taking 6 to 8 second's to make a move. Alex was in favor in this match. With his superior knowledge and experience in chess it was already decided who will be the winner.

The match that was going on would have been fried anyone's brain . Jin was keeping up with Alex who was far more ahead of him. Jin already got the information he needed and now he could play against someone who surpasses the level of «master» and is in a stage called «Grand master». Jin knew he will lose against Alex in terms of everything. But he also knew that he can climb close to Alex's level of strength or intelligence.

For Jin Alex was human peak.

But Alex held Jin in a different manner. Someone who is hard to read, who's thought process can't be predicted also his plan that might seem novice but are slightly effective,Jin was someone Alex would like to face in his strongest form. When Jin is in his strongest stage.

The chess match was coming to an end but Jin did something that Alex didn't expect. He moved the king piece into an open area.

"why did you do that?" Alex asked,taken back seeing him do that.

" Tell me Alex , don't you think this game called 'chess' is a flawed game? " Jin asked Alex who looked at him with confused expression on his face.

" in what sense is this game flawed?" Alex asked him, curiosity got better of him and he was snapped out of flow.

"What I mean is, the King is technically the most important piece in chess, since losing the King results in defeat. But still, for most of the game all the King does is protect himself and hide behind the backs of the other pieces on the board. Being the most important piece in the game, isn't he also supposed be the most powerful piece of all? Shouldn't the King be the one responsible for leading the 'soldiers' to victory?" Jin said.

' Hm he isn't wrong....' Alex thought. Then smirked in the alluring invention.He also starts using the king piece.

1 minute,2 minutes,3 minutes, 4 minutes.....after 10 minutes the game was near the end.

"...It's my lose...." Jin said letting himself fall on the sofa,if someone saw his face right now they would think that he just ran a marathon.

"It was a great game." There were 2 drop of sweat on Alex's face.

'He made me sweat.....quite something I didn't expect for someone who just started a week ago. I don't know how much effort he had to put to get this level of play at such a small amount of time. His level of play can be considered as «Master level» but low tier one. Though he has some serious potential.' Alex thought.

And he was right. Jin played chess and worked on it for 5 hours everyday in a week since he didn't have any work other than eating , thinking and investigating on the case in hand. He watched many games of chess between grandmaster level or master level players. So he tried adapting to the style's of the said players.

" Well let's eat the food I made and I can tell you you will love it." Jin said and Alex nodded his head.

"I will appreciate it." Alex said.

••••••••••••

After they finished eating Alex left for his home. Jin cleans the dishes and falls asleep,not a single thought in his head.