Have we discovered everything there is to discover in chess?

there is not an unlimited set of moves, but there are enough that you will never play the same exact sequence twice in your life.  Just think that you can mess around with your knights for 49 moves, push a pawn 1 square, and continue until you can't push anymore.  Then, you can take 1 pawn every 49 moves until there is only 1 pawn left, then start taking all the other pieces one at a time, until you and your opponent are let with your kings, and one of you has a pawn.

Ahh, permutations. Combinations and permutations. That earlier one with the deck of cards is amazing, think about what it would be with 32 chessmen, 64 squares, and just, say, the first ten moves. Staggering... of course, I think the OP means ideas, like tactics, strategies, pawn structures, etc. If that's the case, I don't think there's any new ideas to learn, just the mass depths of chess to wade into. It's almost like saying, here's the rowboat, you use the oar like so....... *demonstrate* , now, row across the ocean.

I agree that in a non-mathematical, human sense there will always be something new in chess. To paraphrase Lasker chess will always be a "fight".

Even if chess is solved, people will play for the joy and pure competition.

I don't think many checker players have given up checkers because it has been solved. 

It's like derrivitives, where the equation equals zero, but when the number is 0.00000000000000000000000000000000001 greater or less, the answer is different by many digits (as many as 1)  ex:  f(x)= 3/(x-7) as x approaches 7.

The answer is quite simply no. Take any subject in the world, and I gauruntee you that we haven't discovered everything about it. Period. End of story. Case closed.

In terms of basic ideas and principles, I would say yes, but in terms of different positions, absolutely not.

Well put.

I have lost to scholars mate more than once.

I don't think you can close the case on this topic. We have not discovered everything there is to know about it yet.

You always play the openings more than once, though the end position and middlegame never tend to be the same.

Yep, though I think that's what the guy said .

He said we can close the case on it*, period, end of story.

I don't think we can, because we havent discovered everything there is about it.

* "it" refers to the idea that we have not discovered everything about any subject in the world.

I think he's saying that we will never have discovered everything on any topic, and that there's no point of debating, because it's basically a fact. 

Even if we did, the human mind is incapable of remembering it all, so tournaments will still be worth it.

And then there's 960 different starting positions with the same nearly-infinite positions.

I agree, out of our comprehension. Human intuition is the closest thing to matching this. 

That's only in Hollywood, where they ran out of ideas about 12 years ago. Until we solve "gg", chess remains alive

52! is 80658175170943878571660636856403766975289505440883277824000000000000

He is trying to close off debate on that topic, which I think is still open.

Yes totally agree! I don't actually play 960 though... I've heard that it will be around the year 2200 when our computers are powerful enough to "solve" chess so we have a lot of time still left!

WHEN chess is solved via the 32-piece endgame tablebase, (that's what it will be as we are solving chess now working backwards from the endgame, hence why the endgame is the best part of chess and so completely rules ), THEN everyone will start playing 960 instead of normal chess. Normal chess will then be a brilliant piece of human history!