Will computers ever solve chess?

Nor does stating your own definition.

LOL there's only one perfect game and has never been played.

He haven't used any ad hominem... by the way you can call 'attack' to a fallacy as it's just an incorrect application of a logical principle

 He seemed to have missed the part where it says that ‘new mistakes are always being found’. Mistakes which may change the theoretical result of a game and so nobody really knows what that final result is. 

Nope. This thread reminds me of Antenna TV — every page is a rerun.

A perfect game is simply what achieves checkmate in the shortest amount of time when both players make the best move every move of the game.

If chess is theoretically proven to be a draw when the best move is played in every position, then yes a perfect game of chess would be a draw. It is also possible that there are MULTIPLE ways to play a perfect game, all leading to the same result ( a DRAW or a WIN for one side). And who says a perfect game wouldn't be interesting? If white is theoretically proven to win a perfectly played game of chess, how do you know there isn't some thrilling 100 move combination involved, too subtle for us to see?

For 1 player then.

In my understanding of "perfect play" "shortest amount of time" is irrelevant. Maybe choosing 'the mate in 8' is better on some level than another forcing variation resulting in mate in 9, but the outcome is the same regardless. If chess is, in fact, a theoretical draw, i.e. no forced win for White or Black, and no account is given to the time it takes in moves/ply (after all there are only three possible outcomes, win, loss, or draw) then I agree there are a multitude of ways to secure the same result, a draw. Perfect play, then, would include all variations not leading to a [forced] loss.
Perhaps White could secure the same guaranteed draw even after playing apparent rubbish like 1.Na3 ... 2.Nb1 and afterwards continuing with more orthodox play. Such a strategy permits Black greater liberty to misplay, and would still be "perfect play" in my mind so long as chess is a draw. [Neither 1.e4 nor 1.d4 would be any better since they lead to the same outcome, draws]
Yet, I do not know without a doubt that there isn't a forced win based on long, subtle combinations RE: "100 move combination... too subtle for us to see"
Or, the outcome of an early imbalance of pawn structure like that of the Ruy Lopez, Exchange Variation.

Yes, the key thing is how long would it take if nowadays no computer is working on it.  and second is when will the state of art of technology be capable of building a computer for the purpose.  I think there's plenty of time meanwhile to enjoy this game until that happens...if it ever happens

True, and such computer has not yet been built.  Let's wait very long for it to turn up then, meanwhile, let's enjoy our beloved game of chess.

Yeah, someone said something about that a few hundred pages ago, probably,

When computers do solve chess it will show that after 1 e4 c5 2.c3! that black is lost, and my A Bust to the Sicilian Defense post will go down as the greatest piece of chess literature ever written

Hopefully they will one day but not in our lifetime sadly.

That will be a 32 man tablebase. 😰

8500

Perhaps computers have solved chess thousands of times already but the computers haven't been programmed to tell anyone. In chess a player has to make the best move so if a player makes the wrong move he losses fast. I don't think there are that many different moves to make.  

Abstract Objects.
What other sorts of things could be included in the category of abstract objects? The funny thing is that in many seminal texts on the subject, one has to plumb deep to find mention of what would count as an abstract object. Mathematical objects generally top the list (numbers, points, lines, triangles, etc.), followed by things like chess moves, games in general, pieces of music, and propositions. How are these things abstract? We generally think of a chess move, for instance, as something that exists by virtue of a concrete chess player actually moving a concrete chess piece in accordance with the rules of the game (which could themselves be considered abstract, but never mind this for the moment). But that seemingly concrete move can be instantiated in so many concrete ways — you could be replicating someone else’s game on your own chess board, you could make the move on a hundred different boards all at (nearly) the same time, you could make the move in your head before you make it on the board,… and all of these concrete possibilities point to the metaphysical problem here: If you believe there is only one move, and it’s concrete, then which move is the one move? And then what are the other moves? Copies of the move? Or instantiations of the same move? If you believe in abstract objects, you have, on some takes, an easier time of it. The move itself is an abstract object, and every physical version of that move is a concrete instantiation of that move. That is, none of the concrete, physical moves are actually the move — there is only one move and it is abstract, and any physical move is a copy, like a sculpture of a real person. (You can have a thousand sculptures of a person, but there’s only one person. The sculptures are imitations or instantiations of the person.)

(Copied)

Solving chess (The Perfect Game) is but an abstract thought. 

A possibility thereof exists only in the mind, not in the real world.

Every time you post here I am stunned by your ignorance.

A number of board games have apparently, already been solved. Are these not abstract thoughts also? The possibility of their solution seems to exist both in the mind and the real world. How/why would chess be different? 'Just trying to understand...

Some Games That Have Been Solved

Copied from: https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~chinook/games/

Awari was solved by John Romein and Henri Bal (2002).
http://www.cs.vu.nl/~john/papers/Computer-03/awari.ps
They have a nice applet for viewing the proof.
http://awari.cs.vu.nl

Connect Four was solved independently at roughly the same time by James Allen and Victor Allis (1988).
http://www.connectfour.net/Files/connect4.pdf
Recently, the game has been strongly solved by John Tromp
http://homepages.cwi.nl/~tromp/c4/c4.html

Go Moku was solved by Victor Allis (1994).
http://fragrieu.free.fr/SearchingForSolutions.pdf

Nine Men’s Morris was solved by Ralph Gasser (1994). http://www.msri.org/publications/books/
Book29/files/gasser.pdf

Qubicwas solved by Oren Patashnik (1980) and later by Victor Allis (1994).
http://fragrieu.free.fr/SearchingForSolutions.pdf

Some popular games have been solved for small board sizes, including:

Hex (7x7) 
http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~hayward/publications.html

Go (5x5) 
http://erikvanderwerf.tengen.nl/5x5/5x5solved.html

Amazons (5x5) 
http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~mmueller/ps/5x5gpw.pdf.gz

Othello (6x6) 
http://www.feinst.demon.co.uk/Othello/6x6sol.html.

The tablebase of chess has about 10^47 positions, each of which would require about 160 bits to store in compressed form. For comparison, the Earth has about 1.5 x 10^50 atoms (about 9 atoms for each bit in the tablebase of chess).

While one might feel that the full tablebase is unnecessary (which is true) it is necessary to cover any position that the opponent could reach, even with the daftest of play. The tablebase is way smaller than the number of legal games, so analysing such games amounts to analysing every necessary position to the end and caching the result, which is what a tablebase does.