if we "solve chess," will anyone play it anymore?

What is all this recent talk on here of "solving chess"?

it's an interesting topic. who wouldn't want to think about it?

Solving chess - knowing the exact best moves - won't win many games even if you memorize them because, usually within several moves, games are out of the book or into !? or ?! variations, and you'd have to memorize more lines than the brain can hold.

Additionally, consider that machines have "solved" kicking or hitting a ball farther or jumping higher, etc, than any human can.  That doesn't mean that Football, Baseball, Basketball, etc, play by humans is not exciting.

When Garry Kasparov played 2 Bc4 after 1 e4 e5 against Bareev in 1993, the Bishop's Opening that had been out-of-favor for over 60 years, he surely didn't do it because he was convinced it was better than 2 Nf3, 2 Nc3, etc.  He played it because it could transpose to positions in the Vienna Game or King's Gambit Declined that were favorable to him BECAUSE Bareev would not have been as familiar with the opening.

Computers have solved poker and blackjack for years; and yet, people are still playing those games.

I think people will still play it. There will always be chess addicts.

If chess is solved, I think the game would still be played pretty much the same as it is now. It is possible chess might be solved someday, but the solution will probably be way to complicated for anyone to memorize.

For example, if it's found that White can always win, then "White" will need to know the correct move for all of Black's 20 first moves. After White plays his next move (which is presumably the "correct" move in reply to Black's first move) then he will need to know the correct move for Black's next choice of twenty moves.

After Black's 3rd move, White will have needed to know the correct reply to about 20x20x20 = 8000 first three moves. This is already way to much for me, and it keeps getting exponentially worse. Of course White's correct moves can always be stored in a database. So solving chess will ruin the game for people who use databases or other software. But it's already ruined in this way. Stockfish and many other engines already win over any human.

Tic tac toe is solved and many still.play it. I will play chess even if a book about Solved Chess is published. And will also buy the the book.

On another hand, draughts (aka checkers) is solved as well and people still play it.

Yes and No

If chess is solved, then what is the fun of learning and practicing chess? You just solved it and now know all the best moves, and so does everyone else. So what would happen to ratings if everyone chooses awesome moves? It's kind of sad when you don't get bragging rights because you are like 400 rating points above someone.

Yes because, duh chess is fun and addicting 

Some massive computer database might eventually have the solution to chess. No human brain ever will. You won't know all the best moves, and neither will anyone else. Not unless you cheat by looking them up during the game. You could try to memorize optimal openings, but at some point your knowledge runs out.

lol. I would probably also - or at least read everything online about how it was done. Chess is no doubt the next "big game" that mathematicians would love to solve. I am sure there will be tons of chatter on the internet if and when it happens! Even here I'm sure!

I solved chess a long time ago.  I know how all the pieces move and capture, how to castle on either side, how to promote and under-promote a pawn, etc.

There would be more variations than anyone could memorize. You could easily take your opponent out of book and beat them with tactics. There are just too many possible moves for computers a trillion times as fast as ours to consider them all more than 5 or 6 moves deep. So chess won't be solved for a long time.

My question though is if chess were solved, and a computer had it all, how many moves would a grandmaster or even Stockfish last against the solution? My guess is 20 moves.

Encyclopedia of Chess Openings is 5 volumes. Encyclopedia of Chess Solutions > 500 volumes.

Probably true. The 500 volumes might be the instructions for "one way" for White to win. Not sure how many MB (or GB or TB?) that is, but too much for me to memorize.

That's a really good question. If chess is solved, nobody knows how many moves it would require for one side to force the win. If it is 20 moves, that could be within the capability of computer storage.

Shannon estimated that there are 10^120 games of chess based on an average game length of 40 moves, but that has nothing to do with storing the solution of a forced win.