Which one is greater the number of atoms in the universe or the possible chess games

The question came from Claude Shannon, inventor of ‘Information Theory’ in 1948. The theory uses mathematics to understand the rules governing the transmission of messages through communication systems, applicable to everything from computer code, speech and music, to the dancing of bees. Using maths and logic to understand the world around him, it wasn't long before Shannon began to wonder if a computer could beat a human at games, such as chess.  In 1950 he wrote a paper asserting this possibility, but it wasn’t until the 1970’s that computers began to defeat humans at the game – generally poor players who made silly mistakes. But they could not defeat Grand-Masters. That did not happen until 1996 when DeepBlue beat Gary Kasparov. The following year the improved DeepBlue beat him 31/2-21/2. 

So why did it take so long? Remember the question at the start?

There are between 1078 to 1082 atoms in the observable universe. That’s between ten quadrillion vigintillion and one-hundred thousand quadrillion vigintillion atoms. Which is a lot. But...amazingly, there are even more possible variations of chess games than there are atoms in the observable universe.

This is the Shannon Number and represents all of the possible move variations in the game of chess. It is estimated there are between 10111  and 10123 positions (including illegal moves) in Chess. (If you rule out illegal moves that number drops dramatically to 1040 moves. Which is still a lot!).

"There are even more possible variations of chess games than there are atoms in the observable universe."
You might think, ‘well a computer has conquered the most complicated game in the world there’s nothing left for them to do?’ and you’d be...wrong! There is a game with even more possible moves and variations and it is called Go. Thought to have originated in China over 4.000 years ago it did not become popular until it arrived in Japan around the year 500. It is played extensively in SE Asia: professionals start learning the game as very small children and spend all their lives perfecting their ability.

Go has more than 10170 moves...making it a googol times more complicated and varied than Chess and dwarfing the number of atoms in the Universe!

there you have it folks there are more possible outcomes of a chess game than atoms in the universe