A story about Python... sort of

[Russell Reagan]

"John J Lee" <jjl at pobox.com> wrote:

>  A Google result (appropriately enough, given the origin of
> the name Google) suggested 10**120

10**120 is the estimate of "paths", or "games", not "positions". The
estimate of unique positions is 10**40, give or take. I don't recall whether
that figure includes illegal positions that could never exist in a legal
game of chess.