Though Chess cannot be solved completely in a long, long time, haven't they already solved large move trees that goes back even to the very first moves of the game? For me this is very exciting, because we're beginning to refute openings -- you know, like the King's Gambit.
Also, people have to keep in mind that in order to solve chess for practical reasons, one does not have to analyze every single position theoreticly possible -- for instance, you can ask the computer to stop analyzing positions where one side has the advantage of +5 and no checkmate in sight.
It's facinating to think that one day, we may know that only e4 and d4 is winning for white and all other first moves draws, ...e5 is drawing, the sicillian defence is drawing if played in the dragon variation etc etc.
Some of these lines are not that far off being solved, are they?
Is it though? What if white has a forced win after that position?