Will computers ever solve chess?

  Speaking of poor reasoning...2 idiots agreeing to a draw after a few moves does not make a game perfect.

 If that is not immediately seen, the brain has a serious intellectual handicap.

Will people ever stop prattling on about computers solving chess ?. I guess not

lol - if you take this entire thread and put it into a filter to sort out anything that doesn't withstand close mathematical scrutiny, then it would be one page long. You can read it here:

https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/79272/is-there-an-algorithm-that-can-solve-chess-within-the-span-of-a-human-lifetime

Chess has only 3 outcomes, White win, Draw, Black win. Perfect play mean any move if you  can still "Win from a winnable position". "Draw in a drawish position" 

Although we dont have 32 men TB for perfect chess, we can now access perfect chess up to 7 men TB.

In fig 1.  white move Kf2 leads to mate in 9. but Rf2 is also mate in 10, both can be assumed as perfect chess cos they both will lead to win within 50 moves rule. But Rf8+ is flawed as it deviate from win to draw.

In fig 2. Any move is a draw as white cant  forced win black , so even if white throw away Rf8+, it is still perfect chess.

Going back from ending to opening, when we have 32 TB available, I am pretty sure that 1. a3, a4, e4,d4 are all perfect chess moves cos  white cant forced win like figure 2.  (In fig 2, even 3+ material adv is draw, so one move adv is draw)

However, if black play 1.e4, e5 2, d4,d5 ( That d5 move from black would likely be imperfect chess, and likely lead to forced lose. 2. Other alternative moves, like exd4, is likely a perfect move which can lead to draw for black.

Here’s the thing about computers. A computer, if sophisticated enough – which is only ever related to speed of calculation, speed of search and its storage capacity, can solve any problem that has a finite number of possibilities given enough time. It is envisaged that there are some 10^¹²⁰, so a database of the said number is required and the time and speed to search the database. This is not difficult in the true sense of the word, it is just whether the amount of resources will ever be available or should be made available to dedicate to such a pointless endeavour.

 We hear of quantum computers but this is only a computer using a different mathematical number base that can process millions of  times faster than the latest crop of supercomputers. In fact despite all the bollacks you hear on the internet no such computer exists that can be usefully used. The issue of course is that the current crop of computers can not make intuitive decisions and neither will quantum computers. These so called intuitive decisions lauded by the science world are only the application of very smart searches on a finite number of possible solutions and a finite number of stored cross references.

Here is a simple test, one of only many that proves a point.

 Can you tell the difference between a dog and a cat ? of course you can, kids of four can do it without training or intensive programming; kids of four have not been fed a picture of every dog and cat breed in existence, they, like you, just know. This very simple task for a child which will yield almost perfect results (although the Chinese seem intent on breeding dogs that look like nothing else on Earth) is beyond any computer. A computer faced with the same task would require a database containing images, and digital recognition points like those used in facial recognition, of every breed of dog and cat in the world to do the same task. I do not say that this will always be impossible, but until the algorithm for recognition is developed and input it will never happen, and it will still be an algorithm using a finite number of solution cases. We do not know how a child performs this trick so how can it be imitated or programmatically designed.

Judging from the talk on this forum, I suspect that I am preaching to the converted, however there are plenty of dimwits out there  and I can already hear the howls coming from the aficionados, Tesla owners, and watchers of too many Star Wars videos. Screams of “AI” in a thousand voices led by the lovies (and that space litterer Musk) of Silicon valley. When they talk of AI it is a synthetic AI and not what is implied by Intelligence at all. It is a supercomputer containing enough stored information and cross references to be able to find the solution to its current problem, everything that comes out is the sophisticated result of a sophisticated programmers input.

So to answer the basic question. I don’t know, but I expect that humankind will have destroyed itself long before the necessary resources to do so ever become available.

Speak for yourself .

Even if this were true, though, the answer is simple, and I will quote it from your link...""No - chess cannot be solved within a person's lifetime".  The other main commenter agrees but in a less definitive way.

That was not the consensus after comments were subject to peer-review. It was thrown out, just as your posts here were also thrown out.

Sorry but someone playing a perfect game would not destroy an engine.

Where do you get such silly ideas?

We are greater than computers sincemwe created them! In my topic about engines except for AlphaZero, I showed some of its bad qualities and its problems and weaknesses.

I suffer from a disorder where i speak the truth and it pisses people off.

[can't wait to get a reaction from this one...]

According to whom?

Whatever, just stop posting your own little exchange question like the results are in any way authoritative.  It's embarrassing.  What's next, a Quora conversation is your proof that black holes emerge in another Universe?  Yahoo Answers proves the existence of God?

  That’s what religious fanatics say, when spreading around their dishonest propaganda. 

 Their sickness, though, is of a more clinical nature.

  It’s literally impossible to play better than perfect, and engines aren’t perfect.  That’s called reason and logic. 

lol Wow. I said “ALL the top engines.”  Is the most monstrous engine we have one of the top engines? 

Actually after you broke your original statement apart and did not repeat part of it--you said both "All the top engines" and also "the top engines"

Both meant a several engines and neither squared with your original statement of "the most monstrous engine" which means one engine.

Right now the strongest engine is [apparently] Alpha Zero.

When you break your original posting apart into separate sentences and/or words--you can change the meaning of your original posting.

Also after breaking your original posting apart--you changed the wording.

You really cannot prove anything this way and you created the logical fallacy called "red herring".

It is possible that a human might get lucky and draw a game against Alpha Zero but that is a very long away from beating Alpha Zero. [Alpha zero lost zero games in the recent match]

 Alpha Zero is quite strong and getting up there towards playing without mistakes. And Alpha Zero may get even stronger!?

Lots of laughs!  i knew someone might bite if i wrote that idiom--and you fell for it!

You know those puzzles which computers cannot solve? Those will probably remain unsolved. Also, chess might evolve by the time computers are able to crack present day chess.