Chess is already solved

We have book lines that lead to forced draws, but most players voluntarily go off the opening path that leads to these draws, then conclude that chess has not been solved.  It has.  It's not a "hard" solution but a soft one, requiring only a few things:

1.  Booking up in the few lines which lead to forced draws for black.

2.  Having technique to hold a draw in a clearly equal middlegame (see 1 above for how to reach that middlegame).

We're about to enter an era where perfect chess is played from move one, so far into the game that drawing is a matter of simple technique.  At this point chess will become completely irrelevant since the solution (the drawing lines) will become easier to memorize.  This is precisely how checkers was solved.

The days of the Stafford Gambit being "exciting" are quickly drawing to a close as a pandemic-isolated world with all the time on its hands to study the game gets closer and closer to finding the cheese in this once-baffling maze which is looking more and more like Tic-Tac-Toe than ever before.  There are no "come from behind" wins against engines, and seeing the same opening mistakes decide games grows tiresome very quickly.  

Currently, no fewer than five authors are working on books which will publish something closer to the solution to chess than we have ever seen.  

Maybe true but when someone plays a move that isn't the best but still playable then you will have a good game. That is how Lasker dominated for so long. His opponents expected the best move but he got them flustered by playing a weaker move but still playable. With that strategy you get out of the book lines and both players have to think. Nobody can memorize all lines. It isn't possible.

Even if a computer says chess is "solved" and it's a draw with best play means absolutely nothing. Would you play a game that had one side always win with best play? No you wouldn't. Humans are not computers so regardless of what some computer says chess will always be played by humans who make mistakes. Now if a computer says "do this and that and that and white will always win..." Then we have a problem and will have to find a new game.

Chess 960 has 960 possible starting positions. Nobody can memorize all of the lines in 960 openings. Maybe chess in the future will be 960... Maybe call it Neo-Chess 🤔 Or just call it Chess and we changed the rules.

Pretty sure that anybody with a brain has known that chess is a draw for a very very very long time now. I'm talking about going back around a century here. This is not news. Chess goes on.

Exactly.