Chess will never be solved, here's why

Definitely not me.

In my opinion, chess isn't going to be "solved" any time soon, in the sense of understanding the best lines. I think it's a draw anyway, with best play, so it would just be centillions of googolplexes of chess lines, all drawn if there are no mistakes.

When people say that there's no way to prove that until it's solved; but still there's no way to solve it, then the word "solved" seems to become a bit redundant. That's why it's the monkey house.

No, you ignore your own non-played options. You ignore options for the other side only when they are definitely non-viable. Otherwise, what do you mean?

You know what a googolplex is then. That used to be in the Guiness Book of Records as a Big Number, back in the early 60s.

<<<<Larger number in Buddhism works up to nirabhilapya nirabhilapya parivarta(Bukeshuo bukeshuo zhuan 不可說不可說轉) { 10^{7 x 2^{122}}}  or
10 ^37218383881977644441306597687849648128>>>>

(A googolplex is given by WIKI as 10 ^googol. I'm not entirely sure that is correct. In fact, I believe it may be wrong, because they then give it as 10^100 (ten raised to the 100th power). That was defined as a centillion, however .... and a googolplex was different.)

'Biggest number' ...  Lol.
There is of course - no such thing.  And there's no 'biggest prime number' either.  And there's a short neat proof of that. 
There's something in math called 'infinite series'.
But is there a good way to express the plural of 'series' ?
Mustn't get too 'series -ous' about that.

Chess isn't solved - might never be solved (humanity might not survive that long) - nor is an exact number of legal possible chess positions known.
There are ways to precisely state 'upper bounds' on the maximum number of legal chess positions.
Those 'upper bounds' are of course always positive integers (just mentioning that obvious point on the side for now - when dealing with integers - there's particular math that can be applied)

The first and very simple upper bound is 13 to the 64th power.

Because every square can only have 13 states in legal chess.  
(my keyboard not user-friendly about the exponent 'hat' symbol)

That 13 raised to the 64th ... is an extremely humungous  number !
Could it perhaps be more than an upper bound on the number of atoms in the observed universe ?
Is it 'good news' that that 13 raised to 64th power can be substantially cut down?
Yes I said this before - but repeated ...
The number of ways to have 32 squares empty on an 8x8 board 
is mathematically  (64 x 63 x 62 ...  x 33) divided by '32 factorial'.
32 factorial is written 32!
That's right.  An exclam mark is used in math to denote 'factorials'.
Should I explain or try - as to why the division by 32! is necessary ?
Its so that 'ways' are not overcounted. 
Each single way can only be counted once.  
The 32! on the bottom will always cancel out with the term on top.  
It must !  Has to be an 'integer' result.  But not because of a 'want'.
How could it not be an integer ? 

#867
See for yourself that the boldened statement is true: this is Tromp's breakdown of all positions:
excess promotions:  0 positions: 19201527561695835455154058755564594798074
excess promotions:  1 positions: 382355871178268365234183218244670372695068
excess promotions:  2 positions: 3666683498600457464891752992187014354136188
excess promotions:  3 positions: 22267499667290257736558400874926183060238400
excess promotions:  4 positions: 95095065373967146179514528215894174339720228
excess promotions:  5 positions: 300571414300527313744528888013946849776424304
excess promotions:  6 positions: 721668497316402902485416452421325823057710432
excess promotions:  7 positions: 1329934072135692805837128923570048899100334756
excess promotions:  8 positions: 1874962044164806332602085236357597905810647344
excess promotions:  9 positions: 1980800128935921108339671872170042183548439128
excess promotions: 10 positions: 1492529839915108301878747832838229979840571492
excess promotions: 11 positions: 722080907452760073481816196266539169729817880
excess promotions: 12 positions: 175351843526979273665005184194531833618491680
excess promotions: 13 positions: 7338473695924787177946719990630518998574920
excess promotions: 14 positions: 45087168602668580254351850721788483191140
excess promotions: 15 positions: 55323182237139471340692375109727946960
excess promotions: 16 positions: 11716401834002951530424702440978260
Total:                         positions:  8726713169886222032347729969256422370854716254

#864
I agree with
"From the standard starting position exhibit (or prove the existence of) a forced draw for both".
We know white enjoys the first-move advantage.
Hence black tries to prove a draw and white tries to disprove a draw.
"White must play to win, while Black must play to draw" - Sveshnikov
Hence for all reasonable white moves prove the existence of at least one black move that holds the draw.
Hence if we arrive at a game that ends in a draw, then in retrospect all black moves are good, good enough to draw, and it is the white moves that need takebacks to prove there is no winning way for white.
Example:
1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 d6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 Nf6 5 Nc3 a6 6 Be3 Ng4 7 Bc1 Nf6 8 Be3 Ng4 9 Bc1 1/2-1/2 draw by repetition.
Hence the white moves need takebacks: Bc1 and if that leads to a draw too then Be3. 

And so now we see that you don't even know the definition of "vast majority" ...in order to call it a majority, the positions with 9 excess promotions would have to be greater than all the others combined.  To be called a "vast majority" would mean not just a majority, but at *least* a twofold to threefold majority (personally, I'd say a fourfold majority).

@tyxgc

And in any case all you have done in #880 is tell us just how far adrift you are in your estimate of legal positions.

So, the emboldened class (exactly 9 excess promotions, I believe?) is 22.7% of the total. Which I call a minority.

Interestingly 50.17% of the positions fall into the classes with 9-16 excess promotions), BUT I believe these include those with excess queens, so the positions with 9+ underpromotions would be much less than 50%.

The strange thing is that you all seem to think that this petty squabbling over whether or what proportion of promotions should be counted has anything to do with the ultimate problem .... that chess should be, some time, "solved". Talk about lack of focus ..... it shows that none of you really have a clue about HOW to focus on the rather difficult concept of "solving" chess.

#884
Those are legal and illegal positions as counted by Tromp. about 5% of these are legal.
#886
That is right, people keep squabbling.
Focus.
Chess can only end in a draw, a win for white, or a win for black.
Chess has a finite number of legal positions e.g. 10^37.
Thanks to the 3 fold repetition rule each chess game thus ends in a finite number of moves e.g. 10^37.
Thus all positions including the initial position are either a draw, a win for white, or a win for black.
So there are 3 possibilities.
A) The initial position is a draw, the first-move advantage is too little to win.
B) The initial position is a win for white, the first-move advantage is enough to win.
C) The initial position is a win for black, white is in Zugzwang.
If there is proof for one of those, then that automatically disproves the other two.
Most top chess players believe A) to be true, but technically it is a hypothesis or a conjecture.
Theoretically chess can be strongly solved: it suffices to work backwards from the 7-men table base to create a 32-men table base.
That would need to visit all 10^37 positions, which would take 10^28 seconds on 1 cloud engine of 10^9 nodes/s and would need a minimum of 10^37 bits draw/no draw to store.
Neither the time nor the memory is feasible with present technology, so right now strongly solving chess is not possible.
That leaves weakly solving chess, just like checkers was weakly solved.
The same 3-pronged method as for solving checkers is possible.
1) Prepare 26-men tabiya to kick start the calculation.
2) Calculate with Stockfish from the 26-men tabiya to the 7-men endgame table base
3) Look up the exact verdict draw/win/loss in the 7-men endgame table base.
Each capture and each pawn move are irreversible and render huge numbers of positions irrelevant.
Checkers was solved visiting only the square root of the number of legal and sensible positions.
For chess we do not know yet, it will only be known after chess is solved.
Meanwhile it is plausible to assume it is about the square root too, maybe more, maybe less.
For weakly solving chess it is not necessary to look at all 500 ECO codes A00 to E99.
For example to prove a draw against 1 e4, only 19 ECO codes suffice.
That takes 5 years on 1 cloud engine of 10^9 nodes/s.
Likewise a 2nd cloud engine can prove the draw against 1 d4 and a 3rd cloud engine can treat the relevant other openings that do not transpose.
Hence present cloud engines can weakly solve chess in 5 years.
That is what GM Sveshnikov predicted.

Having looked at the Wiki definitions of weak and strong solving, I do not think that it's possible to seperate them and therefore, distictions between them are invalid. That is, of course, because it is not known in advance which lines are mistakes and which are correct, so it's impossible to eliminate lines that have errors, in order to achieve a weak solution. It is only possible to distinguish between the so-called weak and strong solutions with 100% hindsight and, of course, that is unavailable UNTIL a "solution" is achieved. This is what I mean by "focussing". As a general principle, it is necessary to assume that any previous analysis of the exact nature of the problem is mistaken. Otherwise you could be investing in other people's mistakes, as seems to be the case here. If you confine yourself to discussing a problem with others who don't see it clearly, your time is wasted. That applies to both the "better minds" that are contributing here.

You would do better to conclude that your understanding of the topic is not as good as those who define these terms.

The solution of checkers was a weak solution. It was not a strong solution. Read about it if you like.

A much simpler example is to consider the game exactly like chess except it starts with this position with white to move.

A weak solution of this game is the solution of this position as a chess problem with white to move (left to reader). A strong solution of this game is to have a perfect strategy for white in every position that can be reached from the opening position and the same for black (the only non-triviality in the latter is that black should capture the rook when it is hanging).

Now you can see that the two are not equivalent.

I don't know if Chess will ever be solved, but If it does get solved ... I don't think it will happen in my life time 😿🐶

@889
I read the Wiki definitions, which were recommended to me by a contributor here, as those which are being used here. If you think that the Wiki definitions aren't being used or are mistaken, then you should indicate which definitions are being used here, in your opinion. So far as I can see from your words, there's nothing to indicate much of a difference and I can only go on arguments that are presented to me. The diagram you give is irrelevant to this discussion. Don't be cryptic but if you believe you have a better understanding, then share it. Otherwise it's a completely empty claim, as seems to be the case so far.