Chess will never be solved, here's why

I'm pretty sure he's one of the four horsemen. The members were not named so I'm left to speculate.

A node is a vertex in a graph.

The default meaning in chess is a vertex in the game tree. The history alone is sufficient to define that, no need of position or evaluation. 

If you think that a cloud engine can reach 10⁹ nodes a second and you're referring to the objective evaluation in your definition then you obviously believe that SF will solve chess in 1/10⁹ seconds. Why are you planning to take five years to not solve it?

If you're not referring to the objective evaluation, then you're presumably referring to an engine evaluation reached with a think time of 1/10⁹ seconds. Does that mean you think the meaning of "node" is engine dependent and humans don't go through any nodes at all?

A "position" means lots of different things depending on who is talking about it and what version of chess they are talking about. 

Here are three game snippets. At the end of the three, the diagram plus side to move, castling rights and en passant flag are all identical. In fact in the first two the entire FEN is identical. So when you are talking about it you would say they've all reached the same position.

Under competition rules both the first two positions are forced wins for White, but the only winning move in the first is Rb1, while the only winning move in the second is Ra2. The third is drawn.

With your proposals so far to not solve chess, a meaning of "position" that has no definite game-theoretic value and no definite perfect moves is not a lot of use.

Tromp counts positions as you have just defined them, which determine the corresponding game-theoretic values under basic rules.  Those figures are also not much use for your plans to not solve competition rules chess. They're vastly too low.

I think we can agree on "diagram".

Again, there are topics where this distinction is crucial (not just strong solution of chess), but a small amount of attention to efficiency in seeking a weak solution of chess (which we almost all agree is this central topic of this forum, with an accepted standard definition) means that the distinction does not matter much - the possibility of repetition getting in the way of a winning line only appears on an unnecessarily long route to the solution.

I agree that if you actually intend to weakly solve competition rules chess using a forward search that the repetitions can be eliminated as you go along, but not I think using an unmodified version of Stockfish to do the basic work (as @tygxc plans to do in his non solution). You still wouldn't get anywhere of course with today's computers, not even with seven maids with 7 mops. And you can't get away with using only ply count 0 positions, naturally.

Chess is a game of immense complexity, with an enormous number of possible positions and moves. The total number of legal positions in chess is estimated to be around 10^43, and the number of possible games is even greater than that. This means that it is virtually impossible to solve chess in the sense of determining the optimal move in every possible position, even with the most powerful computers. While it is true that chess engines and AI have achieved superhuman levels of play, there is still a vast space of unexplored possibilities, and new opening variations and tactics are constantly being discovered. In addition, the human element of the game means that even the most sophisticated computer programs are not infallible, and can still make mistakes or be outplayed by skilled human opponents. Moreover, the goal of "solving" chess is not necessarily desirable or even meaningful. Part of the beauty of the game lies in its open-endedness and the fact that there is always room for creativity and improvisation. If chess were to be "solved," it would lose much of its appeal as a dynamic and evolving art form. In short, while chess may continue to evolve and be studied for centuries to come, it is unlikely to ever be fully "solved" in the sense of exhausting all of its possibilities and nuances.

Tygxc you don’t have the right to claim that it isn’t a sufficiently strong tournament.

Tygxc are you also just ignoring all of the articles I sent explaining how scientific proof is a lie and completely different than a math proof?

I would not object to using Stockfish for finding candidate moves. Beyond that, it has no purpose.

Having just read the O.P. for the very first time, I think that is implying that the so-called weak solution is the important one. Therefore, you're probably right that we (most of us) agree with that. I certainly do, although I think really we know the solution, or I should say that we know we can be sure that a computer isn't going to improve on the present understanding that chess is drawn. Of course, that doesn't speak for everybody.

I think that the question of repetition was disposed of some time ago and, of course, it doesn't bear on any solution: either so called strong or weak. That is if the sensible position is taken, where we see solving as distinct from playing a game of chess, where such matters do come into consideration. As I pointed out, neither does a 50 move rule interfere with a solution. Anybody who thinks that it does is confusing a solution of chess with a game of chess.

Can't really blame him since you don't know what you're talking about. Of course they are different things. One is deduction only and the other a combination of deduction and what is called induction, or the idea of drawing a generality from "anecdotal evidence", as all accounts of observational evidence, however accurate, are sometimes referred to online.

The problem is your lack of understanding of scientific proof.

That isn’t what proof by induction is: 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_induction

how about you go ask your son if the articles I sent were wrong

Turns out that if you make a set of arbitrary assumptions, you can simply decide that 10^43 becomes 10^37 eliminating 999,999 out of every 1 million positions, and then take the square root of *that* (you know, just because, it has been done before for some other problem and worked) and multiply by 10 and the number becomes 10^17, then you apportion those positions to cloud computing with fuzzily defined "nodes" that do not correspond to positions one to one, add 3 GM lab assistants that are more accurate than the best chess engines, and the answer to chess is only 5 years away...*if* you put up $3 million dollars and follow Tygxc's method absolutely correctly .

I know, hard to believe it is that simple and logical.

Elroch >10,000 posts/year

Tygxc >5,000 posts/year

Optimissed >2,865 posts/year

Btickler >1,675 posts/year

From this, we can clearly deduce the following...

1. Elroch is twice the scientist and mathematician that Tygxc is

2. Optimissed trolls 1.7x as often as I post

This is for the Megaphone Achievement.

@9021

"The total number of legal positions in chess is estimated to be around 10^43"
++ 10^44 positions are legal,
and 10^38 if we restrict promotion to either a queen, or a previously captured piece.

"the number of possible games is even greater" ++ Between 10^29241 and 10^34082

"to solve chess in the sense of determining the optimal move in every possible position"
++ That would be strongly solving Chess to a 32-men table base, beyond present technology.
However, weakly solving Chess: proving black has at least one path to a draw against all white opposition is doable with 3 cloud engines of 10^9 nodes/s piloted by humans during 5 years.

"If chess were to be solved, it would lose much of its appeal" ++ Yes, like Checkers.

@9024

"not object to using Stockfish for finding candidate moves. Beyond that, it has no purpose."
++ Stockfish serves 3 purposes:

1. generate white candidate moves
2. rank white candidate moves for the best first heuristic
3. find the single black response to tentatively reach a 7-men endgame table base draw

“However, weakly solving Chess: proving black has at least one path to a draw against all white opposition is doable with 3 cloud engines of 10^9 nodes/s piloted by humans during 5 years”.
You keep claiming this.  But you have never provided any accurate calculations for this.  

Optimissed it’s rich to here you claiming I don’t understand something while literally also claiming the misconceptions listed.

Tygxc the definition of a node you gave is different from the definition you use in your ‘calculations’

@9036

"the definition of a node you gave is different from the definition you use in your calculations"
++ No, in the calculations I use the definition I provided as in the link I gave.