Why Chess is an Impossible Task to Solve

Chess - as a Puzzle

   At its core, chess is a puzzle — but a self-mutating, dynamic, and infinite puzzle. Unlike classic puzzles with a fixed solution (like a Rubik's cube or Sudoku), the chessboard is a battlefield where the puzzle is not handed to you — it is actively constructed by your opponent while you build one for them.

   Each move is a piece of the puzzle added in real-time. The goal? To construct a maze so complex that your opponent gets lost — and to walk cleanly through the one they try to entrap you in.

 
Why Humans Cannot Solve Chess:
Humans, no matter how talented or trained, are constrained by:

1. Cognitive limitations: Even grandmasters can only calculate a few moves deep accurately (5–10 ply for most). Our memory and attention are finite.

2. Heuristics & biases: Humans rely on pattern recognition, emotional impressions, and learned concepts. These are powerful but imprecise tools.

3. Time pressure: In real games, especially Rapid or Blitz, humans must decide without fully analyzing even the best lines.

4. The Fog of Imagination: Visualization and candidate move generation are vulnerable to error — and seeing 3 moves ahead doesn’t ensure you’ve found the right 3.
We are pattern-based storytellers in a world of perfect calculation. We can intuit brilliance, but we cannot consistently compute it.

 
Why Computers Cannot Solve Chess:
Despite massive advances, computers haven’t "solved" chess and likely won’t for centuries (if ever), for several key reasons:

1. Combinatorial Explosion
The number of possible positions in chess is estimated between 10^40 and 10^50. The number of potential games is estimated at ~10^123 — more than atoms in the observable universe.

Even the best engines like Stockfish or AlphaZero prune billions of positions per second, but they’re not solving the game — they’re evaluating probabilities and best guesses using search and pattern algorithms.

2. Endgame Tablebases are limited
We have solved some endgames — but only up to 7 pieces. Beyond that, the complexity grows exponentially. For example:

• 5-piece tablebases: 100% solved.
  
• 6-piece: Solved and stored (~100 TB of data).
  
• 7-piece: Requires over 300 TB and is still limited.
  
• 8-piece: Infeasible with current technology.
  

A full 32-piece solution? Impossibly massive in size and time, even for future quantum computers.

3. The horizon problem
Engines look ahead until they reach a "quiet position" — where no obvious tactics exist — and evaluate it. But sometimes, key tactics or endgame truths lie just beyond the visible horizon, making evaluations misleading.

 
Why Chess is the Infinite Puzzle:

• There is no final "best" move in most positions. There are only better or worse replies depending on what your opponent sees, knows, or misses.
  
• Every solved position births a new question. Your move changes the board — now you're solving a different puzzle.
  
• The opponent creates a counter-puzzle. Your plan begets resistance, and theirs reshapes your idea.
  
• Time corrupts depth. Even if a move is theoretically best, if it takes you too long to find it in Rapid or Blitz, it fails practically.
   
  

The Beauty of the Unsolvable:
   Chess is not just unsolved — it is beautifully unsolvable, making every game a new labyrinth, every position a fresh riddle. Like a living myth, it cannot be fully known, only explored and navigated with increasing wisdom.

“Chess is an infinite forest of variations. Even if you walk for a lifetime, you will not see all of it. But the deeper you go, the more magical it becomes.”