Chess will never be solved, here's why

Constructing a tablebase MEANS solving chess so it isn't so much a path as a framework to place the results. The only viable path is algorithmic and at the moment there is no prospect of developing an algorithm that can look at relatively simple positions (anything beyond the starting position is necessarily a simpler position than the starting position) and make a perfectly accurate prediction as to what would be the outcome of perfect analysis were it to be available.

To solve chess in any meaningful way we would have to be content with an accuracy projection which isn't 100%. Therefore how meaningful would it be?

It would be like the current 7-piece tablebase, only with 32 pieces from a particular starting point. 

i agree

True.

I'm born male and I identify myself as a man

No sport has been solved yet

     You can spend a lot of time reading through this thread and you'll see plenty of discussion and disagreement about that. Some say you need only examine the "best" openings (e4, d4, c4, Nf3), use engine-aided correspondence games as "perfect" opening play, and have a committee of five GMs examine super-computer analysis and exclude lines they feel aren't worth thorough analysis to get a few chosen variations worked all the way to the seven-piece tablebase. Others maintain that only an analysis of every possible variation from the starting position to checkmate or a known draw will yield an irrefutable conclusion.

     You can decide on your own criteria from wherever in that range you feel will be convincing. 

"centipawn"???

so if you could have captured a queen but you left your queen vulnerable, it is -1800 centipawns?

It is incorrect to think of a centipawn loss as being an underlying truth. It is an evaluation by some specific engine with some specific time, indicating its lack of full understanding of the position. an engine that has full understanding could only give 3 evaluations - 0.0, +infinity and -infinity, depending on the theoretical result with perfect play (instead of infinity, engines actually state the moves to mate assuming the winner wants to minimise this and the defender wants to maximise it.
Where a weaker engine gives an evaluation, a stronger one may give a different one in either direction, by any amount.

From now on, let's refer to this "perfect chess engine" as Stockfish: Final Form. Now here are a few questions:

1) What would be this bot's ELO?

2) Would it only classify moves into Best Move and Blunder?

3) Would the creation of this bot end chess as we know it?

…

No, let's not. That would confuse people who didn't know that "Stockfish" is being used as code for "Not-Stockfish".

Its ELO cannot be judged because that would depend on its style of play rather than its perfection. Work out the reason for that.

It is true that game theoretic optimality and Elo are to some extent independent. Indeed, I believe it is possible in principle for there to be a game theoretic optimal strategy that would not be difficult to draw against. But such a strategy would be very different to an extrapolation of Stockfish (or any other engines, including AIs). The reason is that these imperfect engines aim to make the position as difficult as possible for the opponent. This tends to mean they play optimally when winning as a side effect of the main objective (centipawns, or estimated expected score for an AI).

To generate an engine that is optimal but easy to draw against, you really need two things. The first is a strong solution (so you always know which moves are optimal). The second is a strong engine (by human standards) that is not perfect (so gives a wide range of evaluations in almost all practical drawing positions). The strategy used is then to always pick the LOWEST evaluation move that is game-theoretic optimal. This should make it fairly easy for the opponent to retain the draw. Roughly what is required is that the centipawn "errors" of the strategy are sufficiently large to balance the errors of the opponent. Of course centipawn errors are not fundamentally meaningful, but the idea is that if the evaluation does not rise too much about zero, the opponent will retail the draw,

For example, let's consider the first position. The optimal strategy with low Elo plays the lowest evaluation first move that does not lose. This may be 1. g4, but since the evaluation of this at depth 42, using Stockfish 14 is a miserable -1.7, it is possible that this move is a forced loss. If it is, our strategy will choose 1.Na3 or 1.h4, each of which have evaluation -0.7 with a very deep analysis.

Suppose 1. Na3 is played, then our average player feels moving a central pawn is likely to be ok, so picks 1. ...d4. According to Stockfish 14 this is the fifth best move, but still leads to -0.4 evaluation. In this position white has multiple moves with evaluations below -1.0 and there is surely a low evaluation, game theoretic optimal move that will make it easy for black to retain the draw.

And so on, with white continually trying to keep the evaluation as much below zero as possible without losing, until a comical draw if black avoids ever playing a losing blunder. The key is that in low evaluation positions there are enough plausible moves that are optimal for black to avoid playing a blunder.

======================================================================

Anyhow, this contrasts with the notion of the Elo that is the limit of the Elo of imperfect engines like Stockfish or LeelaZero as they approach perfection by good fortune as they attempt to maximise centipawns. This can even be defined in a way independent of any future software development - imagine a sequence of copies of some specific iteration of Stockfish that is provided with increasing computing power and memory (eg double them, over and over again). It is not unreasonable to believe this engine:

1. approaches perfection
2. its Elo keeps rising
3. the Elo is bounded above

The last is a consequence of the finiteness of chess, I think. With a suitably constrained definition of player, you can't have an infinite sequence of players, each strictly superior to the previous one.

Yes, well worked out. Indeed, that would be a pretty good training strategy.

Designing an engine that cannot lose (always plays "good" moves in the sense I previously defined them) but which maximises a winning strategy might have to alter the winning strategy against different types of player, maybe by assessing their ELO and also perhaps by sampling their play and matching it to types. Imagine how strong an engine might be if it always played good moves but made the game as complex or double edged as possible within that constraint and continued in the vein until it had a simplification into a simple, human-type win available. That really would be "perfect chess" .... maybe more impressive than going for an engine-style checkmate.

Guys almost 10k posts for this "unnecessary " argument let's go you all did 10000000 masters in debating damn it

No, that doesn't make sense and is incorrect. If there were a perfect chess engine then its rating would stop climbing when beating any other player would gain zero ELO. If there were more than one such "good engine" then they could only draw with each other, so that doesn't help.

As they say, "Chess played perfectly is a draw."