Is Chess on the verge of being solved?

Will Chess be solved some day? Yes probably. Can it be countered? Yes, or at least kept alive be fiarly simple rule changes (Fischer-random is one example; adding 1 or 2 extra squares and 1 new piece a more intrusive one).

The lines recommended sound weird though, 1.d4 f5 as "best"? 1.d4 d5 2.e4 as the solution to d5? .... Riiiiight ....

Also, a lot of other highly popular games and sports are, or would be solved if the inclination existed. Billiards in all it's forms is one example, shouldn't be too hard to program an unbeatable robot simul ... and a "mechanical monster" once robotics produces a decent robot =) Curling would be another example I guess.

People would still want to do it by themselves.

Six, not seven. You can download these tablebases free and store them on your harddrive. They require 1.2 TB of space, however, so most off-the-shelf laptops will need an external. The three, four, and five-piece tablebases require 7.1 GB of space. A few seven-piece tablebases have been solved, but we are many years away from the complete set and the storage requirements are outside current capabilities.

When chess is solved completly, the storage requirements of the solution exceed the size of the universe.

The storage doesn't exceed the size of the universe. See the Shannon Number ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_number ). Doing some order-of-magnitude estimations, the Earth has more than enough atoms to theoretically store every possible board position. All you need then is a linked list of sorts.

Therein lies the rub.... 

As for the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit ...

Inasmuch as this opening is named after me (well, half-named), I shall continue to protest that it has not been refuted, only disparaged and declined. Till the last stein is raised in my native land, this opening shall stand glorious.

Vom ersten Zug an auf Matt!

Even if Chess were "solved" by computers at a future date, is there any way in which that information could be utilized by humans? I am assuming that it would be impossible for a human to memorize all the needed information to play a "perfect game."

Perhaps a better question would be: Just how much could human Chess players benefit if Chess were to be solved?  ???

Human chess players would not benefit much but their curiosity would be settled at last. It is my personnel belief that the complete solution would look very much like a huge tree leading in most cases to drawn positions. In most balanced positions there are a few equally good moves as we know from the openings of the masters to date. Having successfully solved chess the computer would then have to check out 960 chess. It reminds me of the quote about a group of monkeys typing the works of William Shakespeare if they kept going long enough.

Yes. I would think that computers, (high-end programs at any rate), are allready much better than the best human, so is the only obtainable goal for a human to reach, that of always being able to draw the computer, or is even that out of the realm of realistic possibility? 

Well put.  Let's not forget that a computer has already beaten a Master. A computer won on Jeapordy.

I also agree with IMAngryWeasel's post.

The human element can never be taken out of the equation. A computer will never be "the best". I have written in previous posts regarding my issues with games that, because of scripted moves, don't really start until the middlegame. Checkers was "solved" and chess will get there when we are gone. I'm sure it will be many years, but, as theisolatedking wrote, who is going to try to memorize all the derivations? I'm sure some will try. Good luck to them.

I'd rather have fun taking chances when playing. I know I'll never be a Master-or anywhere close to it. But, I have fun playing. Only a completely obsessive person would try to analyze every move in this game-that would lead to insanity.

Chess was already solved by a self aware AI entity created by the CIA in the late 90's, code name Big Kahuna.  Big Kahuna, in its infinite wisdom and empathy, has decided to remain silent on this development, for fear that we ape descendant butt scratchers should be deprived of the joy of the game.   

There are 400 different positions after each player makes one move apiece. There are 72,084 positions after two moves apiece.

There are 9+ million positions after three moves apiece. There are 288+ billion different possible positions after four moves apiece.

It's guessed at around 40 moves each the total possible variations scale 40,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.0

(What scientists theorise is the approximate number of atoms in the universe) Though I'm not sure how accurate that is, probably off by a few billion billion quintillion.

In any case, good luck trying to 'solve' the the most complex game in the world, with that many different variations.. It would require in infinite amount of processing power, or an infinite amount of time.

Also, and I've raised this before, "solving" chess wouldn't make the computer play a great game. Far from it. Think of this: the computer is about to play its first move. Should it play 1. e4 or 1. a4? Which is better? After all, it knows that they both lead to a draw. Why should one be better than the other? It might play 1. a4.

A computer which solves the game would play rubbish moves until its position was bad but not beyond saving on best play, they play perfect moves to save it. In other words, it would never lose, but probably wouldn't win too many either!

I have one possible solution to this: create a database of all lost positions. Put this to one side. Then, create a program which plays like current-day chess programs do, i.e. it looks ahead, evaluates moves and then picks one based on its evaluations. Except, make it do a "lost position check" against the database before making any move, to make sure it never obtains a lost position and therefore cannot lose a game.

This is all very hypothetical anyway.

The computer I was referring to is an actual chess computer, the "Radio Shack 1850 Deluxe Sensory Touch Chess Computer" ($99.95), or something like that, sold in the mid-1980's, when the leading-edge desktop PC was a Zenith AT clone (10MHz, zero wait state, 640Kb RAM, running Z-DOS 3.21 ... ooooo, that baby hummed). I understand "1850" to be an estimate of its ELO rating for OTB play. I could kick its ass with the Stonewall Attack, and that made me feel like a man.

But I also programmed on the TRS-80 Model I in the late 1970's, which made me feel like a god.

Not only will chess not be solved in the foreseeable future, this thread will not be completed in the foreseeable future.

Amen to that..

1.e4 and 1.a4 will both lead to a (huge) variety of wins, losses and draws, depending on how the opponent plays. The 'better' move may then be the one that offers more opportunities for winning, or perhaps more opportunities for the opponent to make mistakes.

Chess will be solved when someone invents the quantum computer, but not before that. A quantum computer would be able to crunch through the entire combinatorial explosion of chess to determine whether a position is a win, loss or draw.  Fortunately there are tremendous technical obstacles to building such a machine, so the game will retain some mystery for the foreseeable future!

A computer that has solved the game would not play bad moves in a position where multiple non-losing moves exist and there is no move that wins by force. 

Think about it.  A programmer smart enough to write code that solves the game of chess will also be so stupid that they can't figure out how to select reasonable moves in a drawn position?  It seems very unlikely to me. Off the top of my head I can think of several algorithms that would fix that issue.

Nah... Chess is one of those games where the possibilities are endless and no one nor computer can play the game and expect to know if its going to win or lose just by looking at a board and its first move.

I once solved chess using an abacas, t-square, bubble level, micrometer, hammer, ice tongs, miner's lamp, catcher's mask and a rubik's cube; but I lost my notes on how I did it, and I lost my t-square.