quantum computer. will it hurt chess theory?

Quantum computers probably will not hurt chess theory for these reasons.

1. Quantum computers may never b e  better at chess than what we have now.

2. Chess at the very highest level is already greatly affected and declining -even with what we have now.

3. chess at the lower levels [99% of all chess] is only slightly affected.  No reason that will change.

#124
1. Quantum computers are much faster than conventional computers, so when a chess engine is translated into a quantum programming language taking advantage of the parallel processing feature, it will be much stronger than the same engine on a conventional computer.
2. Yes chess is affected and declining, so a quantum computing engine will affect it more and make it decline more.
3. Yes, at lower levels it does not matter. People still play Nine Men's Morris, Connect Four, and Checkers though these games are solved.

#s 1 and 2 are wrong to the point of me thinking you're being wrong on purpose.

#126
What do you not understand then?

1. A quantum computer does in 200 seconds what a supercomputer does in 10000 years.
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/23/tech/google-quantum-supremacy-scn/index.html 

A faster computer makes a stronger engine.

2. Chess is affected by engines. Stronger engines will affect it more.

No-one even knows how to.

I believe it is possible someone will, some day.  I also believe it may be impossible.

Lol...it's amusing that the article you linked contains a quote from the CEO of Google comparing quantum computers current situation to the first flight at Kittyhawk...the exact same comparison I made earlier and that you tried to refute saying quantum computers were far ahead of that mark.

Speaking of not reading your own sources...your "upper bound of 10^45.888" link has the developer saying right at the bottom that it's not verifiable.  Stick with 10^46.7 for now.

Your 10^20 number doesn't even have an attempt at backup.

"chess is affected by engines. Stronger engines will affect it more."  

I presume you are talking about the upper 1% of the chess population?  correct me I am wrong.?

If you are talking about the upper 1%---if and by the time quantum computers get super strong--chess at the upper 1% level will already be dead.

#130
Yes, the engines affect the upper 1% of the chess population, but it trickles down from there.
For example AlphaZero played games pushing its h-pawn, grandmasters picked it up from AlphaZero and now lower rated players picked it up from grandmasters.
For example the popularity of the Berlin and Grünfeld stems from AlphaZero.

Well, the Berlin was successfully used by Kramnik to avoid losing with black against Kasparov. I don't think any more advertisement was necessary.

Here is a progress report: 2000 qubits
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-022-01741-6 

It is very unclear what the "best" quantum computers are. The number of qubits is not the whole story - quantum annealing is different to the quantum computing associated with much smaller numbers of qubits. And I get the distinct impression that the Chinese are not being entirely open about their very advanced work (probably due to the conclusion that quantum supremacy would be of considerable value to the state).

There is much that is not known about the potential capabilities of quantum computing. Even down to uncertainty about key theorems. Here is a section on complexity of quantum computing from Wikipedia.

We don't know how scalable quantum computing can be yet. There are serious practical hurdles in the way and perhaps, as yet, undiscovered theoretical limitations.

@132
Quantum computers are commercially available from several vendors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_quantum_processors 

#133: None of those are even close to outperforming classical computers at Chess and there may be a scalability ceiling which prevents future quantum computers from doing so.

I have not even heard of a quantum computer that could be used to do anything with chess. I have discussed the possibility of solving chess with one, but the requirements are way beyond present technology (it requires a fairly large number of qubits and substantial quantum circuitry. I I think I heard recently of a 500-gate quantum circuit with useful performance.  For comparison, a popular microcomputer chip that was used in decent hobby machines is the 6502, which had a mere 3510 active transistors (and a smaller number of logic gates, perhaps around 1000?)

But quantum computing is different. All gates need to be unitary and reversible and every part of the system is entangled.

@135
It is possible to run a Python program on commercially available cloud quantum computers.
D-Wave offers Ocean. https://www.dwavesys.com/solutions-and-products/developer/ 
IBM offers Qiskit. https://www.ibm.com/quantum 
Google offers Cirq. https://quantumai.google/cirq/google/concepts
It is possible to translate the open source Stockfish from C++ to Python.

It is thinkable, to use it to generate endgame table bases.
Tromp has demonstrated a 1 to 1 relation between natural numbers 1, 2... N and chess positions.
That means a table base can be simplified to an array of N bits: 0 = draw, 1 = no draw.
Initialise all N bits to 1.
Set the bits of the 7-men endgame table base draws to 0.
Set the bits of the 8-men positions that lead to a 7-men position with bit = 0 also to 0.
Set the bits of the 8-men positions that lead to a 8-men position with bit = 0 also to 0.
This leads to a short 8-men endgame table base.
The bit says draw = 0, or no draw = 1, but it is obvious if a no draw is a win or a loss.
The bit says only draw or no draw and not how,
but that can be derived from exploring the possible moves and seeing if it is 0 or 1.
Most of the processing can be done parallel instead of sequential,
using the unique properties of the quantum computer.

ChatGPT is unusually short-spoken this time.

Yes. it will hurt and not only chess or many other facets regarding I.T. as crypto e.g.

Has no thing to do with quantum tech smartie.

Google is the only 1 having a quantum pc as far as publicly known and they know the risks.

It won't hurt it. There's no A.I. in existence as yet, of course; but if it's ever developed, I think it will alter chess theory. Not hurt it, just change it. Ordinary computers, as you say, changed the way chess is played. Probably for the better but the GMs haven't come to terms with it yet, except for Magnus, probably. He plays as if he understands it, takes it into account and moves on.