Variety in Chess

[donslot]

Does anybody know what the total number of different ways a Chess game can play-out?

Would be interested in any links from web pages for good background.

Suffice to say White has not moved yet and the game could end in any possible way.

[Marsh]

http://www.geocities.com/explorer127pl/szachy.html  gives some idea of the size of the problem.  I like its last two sentences..

"After multiplication we will receive: 108 . 1081 . 1025 . 1020 = 10134 
If a computer will analyse 3,000,000 variants per second, we will receive the result after ... 10120 years !"

[Marsh]

Except that in the original it was 10^8.10^81.10^25.10^20 = 10^134

and10^120 years!