<story><title>Number of legal 18x18 Go positions computed. One more to go</title><url>http://tromp.github.io/go/legal.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tunesmith</author><text>Just because the number of legal positions is computed doesn&amp;#x27;t mean we&amp;#x27;re anywhere close to &amp;quot;solving&amp;quot; 18x18 Go, right?  What&amp;#x27;s the utility of computing the number of legal positions?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tromp</author><text>As George Mallory said when asked &amp;quot;Why did you want to climb Mount Everest?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Because it&amp;#x27;s there.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The number of legal Go positions is a simply defined number that is easily approximated but an enormous computational challenge to compute exactly. I&amp;#x27;ve made it my Mount Everest:-)&lt;p&gt;I also want to see if the number, written as 19x19 trits in ternary, corresponds to a legal position, which would be totally awesome (but at 1.2% the odds are against it).</text></comment>
<story><title>Number of legal 18x18 Go positions computed. One more to go</title><url>http://tromp.github.io/go/legal.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tunesmith</author><text>Just because the number of legal positions is computed doesn&amp;#x27;t mean we&amp;#x27;re anywhere close to &amp;quot;solving&amp;quot; 18x18 Go, right?  What&amp;#x27;s the utility of computing the number of legal positions?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>placeybordeaux</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s just an open problem in combinatorics. Plenty of math doesn&amp;#x27;t have a specific utility associated with the problems.</text></comment>