"an assumption that cannot be proven about underpromotions not being relevant"
++ Underpromotions to rook or bishop only make sense to avoid a draw by stalemate.
That could make sense for one side, but not for both sides.
In the perfect games we have, some promotions to a 3rd and/or 4th queen occur, but promotions to a 3rd knight, bishop, or rook do not occur. If underpromotion were limited to pieces previously captured, then all games would be the same.
"This previous step takes a 0.001% bite"
++ 1 in 10,000 is 0.01%. Tromp conjectured it to be only 1 in 10^6 i.e. 0.0001%.
"Not proven to be possible for chess as of yet, but true for checkers" ++ Alpha-Beta search is a universal method to prune search trees and does not depend on the game.
"The two 10^17 numbers represent entirely different things"
++ Yes, one is the number of positions to be considered to weakly solve Chess and the other is the number of positions actually considered during the ongoing ICCF WC Finals.
That they turn out the same shows that the effort is commensurate with the required effort.
Alpha Beta pruning *when optimal* can effectively reduce the game tree complexity to its square root. Checkers has an average branching factor of 10, chess has an average branching factor of 35. In order to achieve optimal pruning, the branching moves must be evaluated in the best possible order. This means that the best moves are to be considered first.
Slight problem: you have no way of ordering the average 35 moves perfectly (and, as you might imagine, ordering 35 in a more complex game correctly would be a very tall order compared to ordering 10 in a much simpler game), only via a vague approximation based on human and engine-derived valuations. So, I will maintain that it is not at all proven to be possible to achieve the 17 orders of magnitude downward leap you are positing.

@12192
"an assumption that cannot be proven about underpromotions not being relevant"
++ Underpromotions to rook or bishop only make sense to avoid a draw by stalemate.
That could make sense for one side, but not for both sides.
In the perfect games we have, some promotions to a 3rd and/or 4th queen occur, but promotions to a 3rd knight, bishop, or rook do not occur. If underpromotion were limited to pieces previously captured, then all games would be the same.
"This previous step takes a 0.001% bite"
++ 1 in 10,000 is 0.01%. Tromp conjectured it to be only 1 in 10^6 i.e. 0.0001%.
"Not proven to be possible for chess as of yet, but true for checkers" ++ Alpha-Beta search is a universal method to prune search trees and does not depend on the game.
"The two 10^17 numbers represent entirely different things"
++ Yes, one is the number of positions to be considered to weakly solve Chess and the other is the number of positions actually considered during the ongoing ICCF WC Finals.
That they turn out the same shows that the effort is commensurate with the required effort.