Will computers ever solve chess?

  Once an AI starts really deciding for its own, any rules we have set down for them go out the window.

That will never happen, a machine will always do what it was programmed to do, just like humans. That is if one understands that there’s no such thing as a decision-making process. It’s a random process, based on whatever image is deemed predominant in the brain at any given moment.

  With a machine, this process can be controlled or random, in the case of the so-called AI. Humans can use something machines will never have: attention, in which case the way of operating in daily life changes. Until then, the brain is just as conditioned as a computer.

They already are, just like humans, according to their respective programs.

Without question, when computers can calculate fast enough, all the permutations of chess will be determined.  Most likely there will be multiple paths that lead to a draw - no single best move at every position will occur.

But it's kind of like asking if a machine will be made that can kick a soccer ball /football a mile. So what if it can?  That won't have anything to do with human play.

No, it's more like asking if a machine will be made that can kick a soccer ball a billion light years. Or maybe that is making it sound too easy.

It's no use...most people on these forums cannot understand exponents .  They still think 10^46 or 10^120 are reachable numbers.

That is a most impressive pile of meaningless platitudes you have there ...

Sign me up for the idiot classes then!

  I question that. Perhaps there’s more to it than meets the eye.

 The very last game of the second match, easily the weakest Kasparov game perhaps of his entire career, where he resigned after only 19 moves in a dubious Caro-Kann line, has a very logical explanation. The line was as dubious then as it is now. But he only used it because he was facing a computer. Against a strong human he would have never used it. 

  His logic was that computers don’t sacrifice if there’s nothing tangible to gain rather quickly. A computer—in those times—wouldn’t make long time investments. He was perfectly aware that Black can get in trouble if White sacrifices on e6, although the ECO 3 of those times listed the move that he played as the main line. But he knew the other move was safer and, in fact, he played it against Karpov before. But he reasoned that a computer wouldn’t sacrifice and instead would retreat its knight to e4 with a relaxed game (at least in the opening) after that. And he was perfectly correct to assume that!

  But apparently the night before the game, one of the GMs responsible for Deep Blue’s opening repertoire, Illescas, made it part of that repertoire. Otherwise Deep Blue wouldn’t sacrifice its knight for a pawn, on its own. That account was denied by the coordinator of the GMs regarding Deep Blue, but who still admitted the change was made a couple of months before the start of the match. 

  Either way, Kasparov was right: Deep Blue would never make that sacrifice. After that game, of course, it became standard practice, although it’s still not as easy as it appears: one slip and White can quickly lose.

Below is the game written about by troy7915. The PGN links to computer analysis of each position. Ref: Kasparov's, 7...h6.

Deep Blue versus Kasparov, 1997, Game 6

1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 dxe4 4.Nxe4 Nd7 5.Ng5 Ngf6 6.Bd3 e6 7.N1f3 h6 8.Nxe6 Qe7 9.0-0 fxe6 10.Bg6 Kd8 11.Bf4 b5 12.a4 Bb7 13.Re1 Nd5 14.Bg3 Kc8 15.axb5 cxb5 16.Qd3 Bc6 17.Bf5 exf5 18.Rxe7 Bxe7 19.c4

 Yes, yes, 19.c4 Black resigns. You can also find the whole game in MCO 15, if one is into that sort of thing, that is, less accurate opening chess books.

  In reference to 7...h6?, as opposed to 7...Bd6 8. Qe2 (better than 8. O-O, which doesn’t offer any advantage to White, although Kasparov managed to win with this experimental move against Karpov, ‘experimental’ because the standings in that particular tournament were allowing Kasparov to draw that particular game)  8...h6!, which is nowadays the standard way to chase away Ng5, before preparing to castle. Of course, not immediately, as both 8. Ne4 O-O and 8. Nxe4 Qxe4 9. O-O allow mate in one. Also, castling without chasing Ng5 away with an immediate 8...O-O? 9. Nxe6! is another trap. ...h6 is needed, but it has to be correctly timed.

  On the ther hand, recapturing on e4 with the bishop doesn’t prevent Black from castling, and in a 2011 game at the Wijk aan Zee tournament, after 8. Nxe4 Nxe4 9. Bxe4 O-O Black equalized, several moves later.

Regardless, Kasparov made a big mistake listening to his team about playing lines that were inferior based on some assumptions of how a chess computer is going to play.  His team were stupid enough to assume they could drive Deep Blue into the same kind of rook-shuffling indecisiveness that previous engines had always fallen into.  They were wrong.

Always play your best game of chess, regardless of opponent.  And, when you are playing as humanity's representative against the rising machines ...don't resort to tricks and swindles.  It was uncalled for and demeaning.

He was convinced that against an engine who could calculate 200 million positions per second he ought to have a different strategy. He always tailored his play to his opponent and this was no different. But unlike playing against a human GM, where he could study all the previous games up to the present day, he had nothing to go on about that improved version of Deep Blue, after the first match. There was a small print stipulation in the contract that only official matches (not training matches) may be shown to him. When he discovered the small print, it was too late. He also realized too late that the IBM team was much more hostile to him than in the previous match, with the  small print being one of the proofs.

  It makes sense to play a little differently against such an engine. In open positions you are bound to lose, Kasparov or no Kasparov. So he tried closed positions, rather than his usual Scheveningen/Najdorf, with the black pieces.

 I don’t think he listened to anybody when he opted for that dubious line. He looked at it, was conscious of the dangers Black gets into, but chose to play it anyway, reasoning that Deep Blue won’t take on s6. To me, the reasoning in choosing 7...h6? in that last game contains a logical flaw:

  It is logical to think that a computer won’t sacrifice a knight for a pawn with no immediate rewards. A machine was simply not capable of doing that, at least back then. But, and this is a big but, why didn’t he foresee the possibility that a GM would introduce that move into Deep Blue’s repertoire? What would prevent a GM from doing that? And, indeed, Deep Blue instantly took on e6, proving that it didn’t ‘think’, and that it was part of its repertoire, built in by the GMs.

 So his thinking was not clear about this opening variation. Again, I understand why he didn’t choose a Sicilian, I understand why he chose Caro-Kann, but in choosing 7...h6? he committed a logical error.

Although every position exists in theory, almost every game reaches a position that has never been played before.

So it seems.

The universe is large and growing, but it is not yet large enough to store all the possible games. Maybe when we find more efficient ways to store information, computers will have a chance. It is likely that I won't live long enough to see the nine piece tablebases.

His error was in thinking that in the complete absence of any game history to go over, that he should just assume Deep Blue would play "like a computer" and tailor his game thereby.  He said as much at the time...I was reading all the news about it every day.  He should have done what any GM would would do with an opponent you are playing completely blind:  play your best game and don't worry about playing specifically to your opponent until you actually have seen what your opponent is like.  "Best by test" was the correct route.

As for repertoire, you should understand that in order for what you said to be true, the opening book would have to be changed, or, even more drastically, they would have added some direct code that calls for that knight sacrifice in that exact position, which would be unheard of.  Every account I have ever read says that they did not do this, but rather just tweaked the valuations for aggressive knight sacrifices in this general type of position, rather as if they had changed valuations for a speculative bishop sac on h7 knowing that such sacs are beyond the engine's horizons.  This was actually changing the way the engine plays chess and improving it, not adding a specific move/opening to it's repertoire.

It has always been the height of hubris for Kasparov and team to just assume the Deep Blue team had to cheat to win.  Hindsight clearly shows us all that even PC-based engines quickly began mopping the floor with the best GMs in the next few years, so convincingly that no GMs have even attempted straight up matches after Kramnik in 2006...so it's ridiculous to think that Deep Blue could not have beaten Kasparov fairly, especially given the changes he made to his own game.

Yes.

  You are wrong!  Here’s what Miguel Illescas said in a 2009 interview:

  On this same morning we also introduced the move Knight takes e6 in the Caro-Kann, on the same day that Kasparov played it. That very morning we told Deep Blue, if Garry plays h6, take on e6 and don’t check the database. Just play, don’t think...This was his bet, that the machine would never like this piece sacrifice for a pawn. And indeed, if we had given freedom to Deep Blue to choose, it would have never played it.’

 In response, Kasparov reasons:

  I’m no Nate Silver, but the odds of winning the lottery are quite attractive in comparison to those of the Deep Blue team entering a specific variation I had never played before in my life into the computer’s book on the very same day it appeared on the board in the final game. And not only preparing for the 4...Nd7 Caro-Kann—even during my brief dalliance with the Caro-Kann as a fifteen-year-old I played the 4...Bf5 line exclusively—but also forcing it to play 8. Nxe6 and doing this despite generally giving Deep Blue ‘a lot of freedom to play’, in Illescas’s own words.

 And again, Deep Blue instantly took on e6, as an actual fact.

 There were other factors as well. The machine was programmed to ‘self-terminate itself’ from time to time, if efficiency was running too low, which would make it impossible to understand future moves, as ‘the move timing changes, the hash tables change, who knows what else?’, said Shay Bushinsky, one of the creators of Deep Junior. In addition, the Deep Blue team would not provide the printouts, even when challenged, although it is not clear whether they were trying to hide something or simply toy with Kasparov’s mind.

  Moreover, Illescas also admitted that IBM had hired two Russian-speaking spies, a fact that, when coupled with that mysterious specific change in Deep Blue’s  opening repertoire, all of a sudden casts doubt over the whole thing. Let us not forget that IBM benefited financially after that game. And let us not forget what most people seem to forget: this was the second match, the rematch with Deep Blue, and so ‘humanity vs machines’ had already been decided in their first encounter, but somehow the publicity of the second match reached amazing levels which overshadowed the results of the first match.

 Let’s also not forget that IBM adamantly refused to give Kasparov a rematch, even though the score was even, and to make sure that would never happen—a potential loss in a third, deciding game could have brought on financial losses as well—they simply dismantled Deep Blue...Kasparov took for granted  the idea of a rematch.

People think computers have no ceiling but that just isnt true. Information in our universe can be processed up to the speed of light. Therefore computers will never be able to process data any faster than that.