Chess will never be solved, here's why

Not quite.

It's not solved for the majority of positions with castling rights.

For the remainder it depends on what you mean by chess.

FIDE chess is insoluble because no ordered yield is defined for the players in the case of various events occurring simultaneously e.g. simultaneous resignations. FIDE chess is not a zero sum game.

It is a simple matter to fix the FIDE laws to make it a zero sum game, but there are different possible ways. 

If, for example, the resignation and agreed draw rules were excised then the Syzygy tablebases would provide a strong solution of the remainder for both players in FIDE's basic rules game since 2017 (when the 50 move and triple repetition rules were dropped).

Nothing would currently provide any sort of solution of all the remainder for either player in FIDE's previous basic rules (when the 50 move and triple repetition rules were still in force). Those rules (with some further fixes) have mostly been regarded as chess since Ruy Lopez.

The same would be true of FIDE's current competition rules (though those would obviously need more comprehensive amendment to describe a soluble game).

For example, Black can draw under FIDE competition rules in the final position shown here by 26...Ka1, but all current tablebases, including Syzygy, give only 26...Kc1 which loses. 

What the Syzygy tablebases do is provide a weak solution of all 7 man positions that neither repeat previous positions considered the same under FIDE art. 9.2.2 nor are preceded by such repeats with the same material. That is sufficient for perfect play by either player in a game, because the first such position to occur cannot include such repeats.

Also current tablebases except Syzygy (e.g. Nalimov and Lomonosov before it was sabotaged) fail to solve many ply count 0 positions under FIDE pre 2017 basic rules or current FIDE competition rules.

(What's Chess 2.0?)

@8661

"It is the size of the game that puts it beyond reach"
++ Chess is 1000 times larger to weakly solve than Checkers.
Checkers was weakly solved using 10^14 relevant positions of the 10^20 legal.
Chess needs 10^17 realevant positions of the 10^44 legal.
Schaeffer used 50 desktops to weakly solve Checkers.
He used 200 desktops to generate his 10-men table base.
For Chess the 7-men table base is already there.
The 50 desktops anno 2007 correspond to 3000 desktops now or 3 cloud engines.

@8659

"There's only one method currently underway to solve chess,
and that is building tablebases backwards from all possible mates."
++ But that would lead to a 32 men table base strongly solving Chess for all 10^44 legal positions, taking too much time and storage.
Such a strong solution would contain all weak solutions.
There is only one viable method: weakly solve Chess as Schaeffer did for Checkers and as Sveshnikov proposed: calculating from the opening to the 7-men endgame table base.
That takes 5 years to exhaust all 10^17 relevant positions and costs $ 3,000,000.

@8660

"if you think there is a fixed set of best moves this isn't true because a stronger engine might find
a long line based on a different prior move that turns out stronger"
++ A stronger engine does not play better moves, it plays less bad moves in the same time.
You can weakly solve chess with any engine, however weak or strong.
It only needs to calculate all the way to the 7-men endgame table base.
A weak engine will take longer to do that than a strong engine, as it will run astray more often.

I didn't say it could be completed, I said it was the only valid method currently underway.  Your method will not work, and certainly not in the timeframe you claim, as has been pointed out to you countless times now by numerous posters.

@8674

"I said it was the only valid method currently underway."
++ Only an 8-men endgame table base is underway.
It is no valid method as it takes up too much time: billions of years and storage: 10^44 bit.
That is not how Schaeffer weakly solved Checkers: he only generated a 10-men endgame table base and then calculated towards it from the initial position.
That is just what Sveshnikov proposed to do in 5 years for Chess.

"Your method will not work" ++ It works, it worked for Checkers.

"not the the timeframe you claim" ++ It does. Three 10^9 nodes/s cloud engines piloted by 3 grandmasters can in 5 years exhaust all 10^17 positions relevant to weakly solving Chess.

"pointed out to you countless times now by numerous posters"
++ By ignorant posters, like yourself: you erroneously take the prohibitive time to strongly solve Chess to a 32-men table base as the same time to weakly solve Chess.

Congratulations!

You managed to forget the explicit example I posted in #8670, which no tablebase constructed using current methods solves ultra-weakly, weakly or strongly in chess with 50 move and 3-fold repetition rules (like the version you claim you will solve) - in the space of one post.

No wonder you can't remember all the other occasions I've pointed this out to you.

How do you expect to be taken seriously when you claim you will solve 32 man chess, if you don't even understand the first thing about the solutions we already have for 7 and fewer men?

(And it's still not 10^44; not even under basic rules.) 

You realllllly need to re read some stuff.

you seem to be under the impression that this was a rules dispute.

it isn’t.  

Tygxc are you still holding on to that gm quote you took out of context?  I just checked, and you still haven’t proved that chess is a draw.

Tygxc you also still haven’t owned up to the mistake in your “refutation “  of my strategy stealing counter proof

If you don’t know what I am talking about why did you make the comment

Once again...saying that tablebases are the only valid method underway right now (and an 8 man tablebase is a step towards a solution, since each successive tablebase stacks) does not mean the same thing you claim in your last sentence.  Discernment is a challenge for you, which makes your pursuit of this topic that much more implausible.

Ey yo btickler as a veteran of this thread, could u   Point me to the last time someone made a proof that tygxc’s strategy stealing claim is impossible?

Don't know that one, sorry .  

That’s fine dw

I meant I don't know where Tygxc last posted about it prior to this go around. 

Chess is not a game that lends itself to stealing strategies, because check forces a break in any such copycat behaviors, move-losing contests, etc.  Ultra-weakly solved games that have stealing strategies generally do not have any forced response rules constructs like check in them.  So, I am not worried about ultra weakly solving chess, and that is why there has been little discussion of that level of solution in any of the solving chess threads. 

@Optimissed, I did not argue that strategy-stealing was logically impossible in chess. I argued that it would be enormously difficult to prove, involving checking conditions for every position in a strategy. This is by contrast with where it is actually useful in other games. The pragmatic fact is that strategy-stealing plays no role in the solving of chess, as @btickler also observes.

The best conspiracy theories are those that build on facts and science and then deviate at key points with nonsense...the same is true of dubious scientific premises.  Start with Tromp and Gourian papers, add a bunch of fuzzy steps that make wild assumptions and double and triple count the same positions removed in 2-3 steps, mix and bake.  Viola...Tygxc crap cake.