www.paulnixon.org

Funny thing, I've been thinking about chess recently.

Would I be right in thinking that if you can read enough moves ahead, whoever plays white (goes first) will always win?

Chess the game or the musical Steve? (little joke there - backfired).

You'd be wrong in thinking that I think. I can't recommend this book enough - it's fascinating without being too (or even hardly at all) technical.

i would batter all you boys at chess

I'm not sure Paul, if White player could read the game to a theoritcally infinite number of moves, and the black player also, white player would always win due to the old playground maxim of infinity+1 and you can't do anything to it.

Steve. Maybe. But, as the saying famously goes - there are more games of chess than there are atoms in the universe.

My mistake though - I thought you were referring to actual grandmaster play now. You're right, the game is in theory 'knowable' (not in the biblical sense of course), but in a much bigger universe than ours.