Chess will never be solved, here's why

It was a rare event. That'll be $5.

After 7119 replies, this is still a good debate, although enjoyable, a lot does whoosh over my bald swede, but I do have to agree with the above statement. 

    "My conclusion is that this enterprise will not satisfactorily answer the question of whether chess is a win for either side or a draw."

If chess is to be solved, a system must know everything about every position; I believe the term is called a "complete information game".

No university, entrepreneur or business has taken the challenge outlined by tygxc et al. because, in the real world, there's nothing we can learn from solving chess. Real-world problem-solving costs money but ultimately makes money.

@7120

"judgement of imperfect humans to decide what is/is not optimal play"
++ No, the 7-men endgame table base is the judge: draw / win / loss.
We do not need to decide what is optimal play.
As for the single black response:
if it leads to a 7-men endgame table base draw, then it is optimal.
As for the several white moves: we do not need to decide if one of them is optimal or not,
it is enough not all selected candidate moves are not optimal.
That is the difference between analysis,
which ends in some imperfect evaluation like 'white is slightly better', +=, +0.50.,
and solving, which ends in a 7-men endgame table base draw or a prior 3-fold repetition.
That is also the difference of playing with Stockfish: it has to decide on one move to play,
and solving with Stockfish: it can retain several e.g. 4 candidate moves for further analysis.

"you will ignore many variations to save time" ++ Yes, but only those we are sure about.

"you will not consider openings not played to a draw in ICCF games"
++ ICCF WC Finals games only open with 1 e4, 1 d4, 1 c4, and 1 Nf3 and for good reason.
The same in human top competition: only those four nowadays.

"answer the question of whether chess is a win for either side or a draw"
++ That question has been answered long ago: Chess is a draw.
The real question is: 'How?'
A related question is: 'How long does it take?'
If doing it the stupid way with just a computer and calculating all the junk like 1 e4 e5 2 Ba6? down to the end, then weakly solving Chess needs 10^19 positions and takes 500 years.
If doing it a smart and clever way with humans and computers,
then weakly solving Chess needs 10^17 positions and takes 5 years, like Sveshnikov said.

This thread is still going? Impressive 

@7124

"If chess is to be solved, a system must know everything about every position"
++ That would be strongly solving chess to a 32-men table base,
requiring all 10^44 legal positions, which would take too much time and storage.
Weakly solving chess requires only 10^17 relevant positions, which can be done in 5 years.

"Real-world problem-solving costs money but ultimately makes money."
++ Weakly solving Chess costs 3 million $ of money and makes no money.
The same for weakly solving Checkers or Losing Chess:
these cost money and did not make any money, but were done anyway.

personally i agree

@7128

If you only admit a stupid and dumb way of weakly solving, then it takes 500 years.
A smart and clever way takes 5 years.

A way that doesn't work at all takes 5 years.

I outlined why nobody would accept a project doomed to failure. You can only lose because the money and the time are not there.

That's not why. Solving chess, at least in the sense of strongly solving chess, would be to provide an algorithm that evaluates every legal position to "white mates with perfect play", "black mates with perfect play", or "draw", and provide a move that does not change that evaluation. (Since chess games have a finite length, said algorithm can consistently win any winning position, and force a draw in any drawn position.)

No chess engine we have right now can do that. Such an engine's self-play would result in either consistent wins from one side, or consistent draws.

Yes, that does mean we have solved chess with up to 7 pieces on the board (an algorithm for that is available on this website).

     Still, we all believe that the computers and programs of the year 2100 will far outclass those of the present. Why should we just assume that those entities will not be able to punch large holes in the analyses that the Sveshnikov five year plan might come up with? Couple that with the  unanalyzed lines the human experts judge to be unworthy of consideration and the immense number of possibilities that exist following opening moves that the plan will never examine and the "solution" would be unconvincing.

First paragraph completely agreed with.

If I walked a quadrillion years, could I reach the end of the multiverse?

One-hundred tredecillion possible positions most of which are illegal. It's a lawless multiverse.

Chess is only solvable solving it game by game and not position by position. It still requires more resources than it is possible to divert to the problem.

Game by game? That's an unsurmountable problem. We'll never get a solution. Reminds me of Asimov's short story The Last Question.

It is surprising to me that it is beyond @tygxc to understand that what he is proposing is not a way to solve chess, but a way to replace an uncertain evaluation of the opening position by a less uncertain (but still uncertain) one. We need any random person involved in peer-reviewed research on the subject to explain to him that he has got it wrong (since he can't glean this from their work, like most people can).

Nothing better to do? ^^