Cifra

How many possible chess games are there?

Gaming brutal Data from 1950

Guess before you scroll — the answer is below

Answer in games. Shorthand like 9m or 1.2bn works.

The answer

1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 games

Roughly 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000T.

The Shannon number estimates around 10^120 possible chess games — vastly more than the roughly 10^80 atoms in the observable universe. Chess cannot be brute-forced; it has to be played.

Where this number comes from

Source Shannon number, Claude Shannon, Philosophical Magazine
Figure refers to 1950
Last checked
Unit games

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