Have computer engines destroyed chess?

Well make engines illegal, of course.  Anyone caught with a chess engine should be jailed for 30 days for their first offense and 10-20 years second offense.  Also anyone who may have looked at a chess engine should not be allowed to say anything about chess for fear that others may learn from them.  

It might have been sarcasm.

Come join us at the (variant forum). We're playing all sorts of variant chess games, and nobody is using engines because these games have no engines.

Engines don't destroy the game for me any more than a pitching machine destroys baseball or a race car destroys track and field.

As far a memorizing openings goes, most of us would raise our ratings faster if we just learned the general ideas and plans associated with the openings and worked mostly on tactics and strategies, rather than memorize reams of opening moves - where you're often out of the book by move 6.

Those are good analogies, and I mostly agree with you.

But one unfortunate consequence of engines, is that slow (high-quality) play by remote players is generally not possible anymore. Or at least it's not possible with some questioning whether one or both players are using an engine.

There may never again be games such as "Kasparov versus the World" (a game played in 1999 on a public forum viewed by players all around the world).

Another analogy can be the Tour de France, which at times has suffered from the racers being suspected of using perforamance enhancing drugs. I believe some racers have gone so far as to store "clean blood" with their physician, and then have a blood transfusion just prior to a race.

In chess, I don't know if there is a fool-proof way to ensure that a remote player is not using an engine. Among beginners and intermediate players, some analysis can be done to look for suspicious play. But at the top level, I believe that a chess grandmaster would be able to use a chess engine in an undetectable way to improve their play.

I'm watching Dortmund Sparkassen 2017 right now and no one is playing anything that might be seen as advantageous for White. Everyone is just trying to get a game on the board and see what happens. These days people aren't trying to play the best moves. They're just trying to outplay their opponent.

I think the only time people play super theoretical things these days is when they're trying to draw...

long long time ago people always debated over some games or positions and some people was trying to solve the mysteries of chess by formulating methods of analysis and still the search for the truth seems unattainable. But now we have chess engines who can solve almost everything and help humans to play better in chess. But despite of the aid of engines, still human made mistakes in the game or even the best player sometimes losses because of idiotic moves. It means that chess is still very complex and difficult game for a human being, and for that reason chess in my opinion is still a very interesting game to watch or to play.

Engines are very useful. It's like having a super GM at your disposal 24 hours a day. They are just a tool to make you better.

Well I mean they do help our chess understanding... but I think it would be better if it evolved slowly (well I mean it was evolving fast without computers I guess. I don't know much about chess evolution.) I totally see the part about beatiful games getting ruined. I mean besides the best games like the opera house game, there are innaccuracies and mistakes everywhere.