Will computers ever solve chess?

  It’s a fact, I don’t have to either reject it or embrace it. But again, only in that context.

 That is another assumption. There will always be the protection of the physical body. But most of us have the hidden agenda of protecting their ‘mental bodies’, which at the center of it lies the self-image. Most people protect that self-image. I call a ‘neutral mind’, one that has no such image to protect.

  You are not reading carefully. The facts given at random were an earthquake and a shooting. Your ‘opinionated’ mind missed those given facts completely.

 At the speed your mind is moving, with the hidden agenda to prove your hypothesis, you are committing contradictions.

 Hence you first say : sure it is a fact that chess is a draw even if you don’t know this yourself.

And a bit later you also say: I have always admitted that I do not know 100% that chess is a draw.

 And again, if a guess turns out to be a fact, it is still a guess at the moment it was advanced, once you say you do not know as a fact that chess is a draw. At this moment in time you don’t know. You are only guessing and the strength of that guess is irrelevant: it’s still a guess. You still don’t know for sure, there is still a possibility that your guess does not become a fact.  Therefore at this particular moment it is a non-fact. As long as there is one possibility that chess is not a draw. That is statistically, not judging by the strength of your belief, which is irrelevant here.

Here’s where you're getting confused: believing in something 99.99% is not the same as knowing it, which is always 100% and has nothing to do with your strong or weak beliefs. Your beliefs—strong or weak—are not facts. You are mixing them up.

When all the variants are taken into consideration, your beliefs are irrelevant. The facts will speak for themselves. Until then, no one has those facts.

 PS: the word in question was ‘condone’. Both condoning and condemning a fact are meaningless.

I have seen your ton of evidence. I just think it's almost no evidence at all. Lets say someone just learned to play chess and has been playing for 2 weeks. They decide to analyze some of your games and they come to the conclusion, based on their two weeks knowledge, that your ability is horrible. You make all kinds of mistakes like castling, controlling the center, etc. How much credibility do you give this beginner who thinks they know how to judge your play?

That's the amount of credibility I give to grandmasters who think chess is a draw. Compared to the worlds best computers now, and compared to what I think computers will become, their opinion is that of a bumbling beginner. I agree chess could be a draw. But I also agree it could be a win for white or black. I just dont know, and I'm not even close to making any sort of educated guess because the rate of improvement for computers if far outpacing the rate of improvement for people. For me, what people think about the likely outcome means almost nothing. 

When people say "solve" do they mean mate before move 1, or the absolutely quickest mate possible without further improvement, ever? If there are more ways to win a chess game than grains of sand on all the worlds' beaches, that's some pretty serious computing power.

To be precise, more people think the game theoretic value of chess is a half, in which case solving chess means being able to force a draw both with white and with black. [This was achieved for checkers in 2007 after years of computation].

  It’s not about a ‘deep anslysis’ of the game, but about simple logic and honesty.

  No further improvements, yes.

Or, knowing anything at all, in fact. Alpha knows how the pieces move and has the resources to play with itself effectively.

I think that Alpha Zero has solved chess. No one can come up with a game where Alpha has lost while playing white. I don't think that chess is even all that complicated. To humans it is but not computers. Chess is only 8 x 8 squares what if it was 10 times as many squares or 1000 times. I think if Alpha could talk it would say it's a simple game, easy to win or draw playing white. Against a lesser opponent it can win playing black.

Except that being undefeated in Chess and solving Chess are 30+ orders of magnitude away from each other in terms of computational power required.  Anyone that cannot grasp this fact is just creating useless static in this thread...

Alpha zero is as good as it gets? They said that about deep fritz, deep blue, chessmaster 2000 (remember the dos version with "take five" gloom music?)

   That was in the beginning. In the meantime, it has memorized a lot, it doesn’t start from scratch anymore.

  There is no such thing as ‘negative honesty’. How people like to twist things: if they don’t like a fact, which they agree it’s honesty, they call it ‘negative’ because it doesn’t make them feel good. How crooked! A fact is neither ‘negative’, nor ‘positive’: it is what it is, but the condemning mind steps in and a position is taken before the fact has sunk in sufficiently.

  As for logic, show us where troy is wrong. Let us see, maybe he is wrong, who knows?

Did you? You were saying the same thing I was, namely, that alpha zero did not solve chess.

This is exciting and possibly sad.

If Alpha Zero has never been beat as white, I think there is a good chance chess is solved.

I know everyone will try to lecture me on the possible positions being more that the atoms in the known universe, but 99.999 of them have already been discarded in the first 10 moves. You can solve chess without playing all the possibilities. Every game AZ (Alpha Zero) plays reduces the possibilities and brings us that much closer to solving it. Granted once it's solved it will destroy the chess world, hence the sad part of it. I'm sure AZ is still light years from actual proof of solving chess, but the fact that it's undefeated is exciting.

Honestly it doesn't matter if computers solve chess. I doubt there is a way for us humans to be able to remember all the possible moves in order to force a win

it 'll be great when the computers solve chess, then we wont have to keep trying by wasting time playing the game.(satire)

True, but imagine the humility we will feel!