Is Chess a Solved Game?

Table of Contents

• Is Chess Fully Solved
• Is Chess Theoretically Solvable
• Will Chess Ever Be Solved
• What Will Happen Once Chess Is Solved
• Conclusion

Is chess solved? This is a difficult question.

Indeed, the pinnacle of world chess champions has been reached and surpassed multiple times, and it will likely continue to be surpassed again. Every era of Chess has had the best player at the time, only to be surpassed by a new world champion of greater skill in the next era.

With the growing developments of artificial intelligence, many believe that we may one day soon see concrete evidence of the solution to chess. In this article, we will go in depth on what it means to solve chess.

The term “solving chess” refers to discovering the perfect strategy for playing chess, in which either black or white teams can guarantee a way to always force a victory or a draw, from any position in the game. There have been many statisticians and chess experts who claim that chess simply cannot and will never be solved.

These theories have held true so far, as there have been no complete solutions for chess discovered, for any of the outcomes listed above. However with the rise and exponential nature of AI technology, there’s disagreement within the chess and statistics communities about whether or not chess could actually be solved someday.

Is Chess Theoretically Solvable

In traditional chess, the perfect strategy for forcing a draw or victory without mistakes is impossible to find. A common belief is that if an instruction was devised that could guarantee a win (in all cases) or draw (in all cases) it would be better than the existing state of the game (the standard version of chess). Though many who enjoy the competition and creativity that comes with chess hope it is never discovered even if it is theoretically possible, as this could mark the end of the game altogether.

In theory, it cannot be disproved that chess cannot be solved, but there is little evidence that the current computing power today will have any ability to fully solve it.

Will Chess Ever Be Solved

With the rise of Chess engines and AI, many believe that we may one day soon see concrete evidence of the solution to chess. The number of people who share this sentiment is growing every day. This is still a hard question though, as there’s no agreement on what constitutes the “solution” to chess. After all, that solution could be anything from a single strategy for either white or black to always achieve a draw, to a database of millions of opening moves that are proven to guarantee victory if the opponent makes any one small mistake.

If you believe in the singularity, the notion that technology’s exponential growth rate will reach an infinite sort of growth where AI can build upon itself for rapid innovation unlike we’ve ever seen before, then it could be possible that chess will one day be solved.

What Will Happen Once Chess Is Solved

There is of course a lot of contention on what could happen once chess is actually finally solved. Many people are under the impression that even if a computer is able to solve it, it still won’t have an effect on how humans actually play the game, because it will require an immense memory for all of the possible solutions that humans couldn’t possibly understand, let alone employ during a time-constrained chess tournament.

Others believe that once chess is solved, it could mark the end of chess as we know it as people will be able to force stalemates or victories, but this is highly unlikely, and tournaments would still be able to adapt to prevent this kind of strategy from being used all of the time.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there is still much fierce debate on whether or not chess could be solved, but at this point it’s safe to say that there isn’t enough evidence to believe that a solution would have a great impact on the way people play the game. Though it may also be true that we’ll encounter concrete evidence of a solution in the near future, when and if this information is discovered, we won’t know for sure how the game will change until then.

AI will continue to surpass human intelligence in the near future, so we’ll continue to see massive changes to the way we play chess as time goes on.

I hope this post answered your question about whether or not Chess is a solved game. It’s likely Chess will never be solved. If you liked this post, you might also want to read about whether or not Grandmasters have high IQ’s or whether or not Chess requires a high IQ to be good at chess.

Sources:

1. What happens when chess is solved
2. Will chess ever be solved