Chess is weakly solved for all practical purposes (it's not proven but no one is able to show a winning sequence for white even with weeks to prepare vs a top engine playing with something like 30 minutes per move) and it doesn't affect the competition at all. It's impossible to remember it all anyway.
Once/if chess is formally weakly solved it will change exactly nothing for human chess players. If your plan is to remember the solution you may just as well start learning top engine lines today.
Chess isn't remotely solved. AlphaZero trounced StockFish, playing moves that StockFish never thought possible. Meanwhile, some say that StockFish has since caught up. But regardless, if cheese engines keep getting better and bearing previous ones, then in no way can you say that any current engine has "solved" chess because a different version will beat it next year.
"Solved" doesn't mean "beats humans."
I see your point about what "solved" would mean for humans, though.
I am sorry but this is completely wrong. It's true old Stockfish lost to Alpha Zero with specific rules, most notably no opening book which classical engines weren't supposed to be used at in competitive play (which is the reason SF doesn't ship with even a basic one - the user is supposed to use their own) and only one minute per move.
People were able to beat "Stockfish with one minute per move with no opening book" back then given enough time and strong hardware. It's no longer the case. Chess from starting position is completely dead in computer/centaur play/correspondence play. No one is able to win a single game vs an engine running on a home PC even if they can use arbitrary amount of computing power to help.
As to engines getting better: they don't get better anymore at playing chess from starting position. They get better at playing chess starting from set of unbalanced positions (chosen to be on the edge of winning/drawn) which would never occur from engine play from starting position.
My point wasn't about humans but about chess in fact being weakly solved. We just don't have a mathematical proof yet.
What? The idea that chess engines have stopped improving is ridiculous. StockFish is continuously improving. And is not just better hardware. For instance, just a couple of years ago StockFish added NNUE. This actually decreased the number of nodes it could look at per second, but the improved algorithm was so much better it bumped it's ELO by another 80 points.
It would be hubris to say "Ok, it kept improving up until last month or so, but now it's perfect."
If it's still improving, that means the current version can be beaten. If it can be beaten, that means we haven't solved it yet.
> No one is able to win a single game vs an engine running on a home PC even if they can use arbitrary amount of computing power to help.
I'm not quite sure I understand what you're suggesting, because it's not clear what "arbitrary computing power" means -- are they also running StockFish? If so, we already know that StockFish in better hardware runs better, so this is meaningless in a normal game, but I am guessing you mean with no time limits.
Is your suggestion that StockFish of 2020 will always draw against StockFish of 2023 if they have "unlimited time?"
If so, this seems slightly tautological. Chess is finite, so we have always known that "given enough time" anyone could enumerate all the possibilities. But if we restrict the time to, say, an hour per move, perhaps you'd say that's not "unlimited" enough.
But I'm actually interested. Has anyone tried 2020 StockFish vs 2023 StockFish with huge time allowances?
I have written that chess engines stopped improving at chess played from starting position - it's a draw every time (well, unless you really push them to play very fast on limited hardware). The reason we assess current Stockfish as stronger engine than Stockfish from 2 years ago is that it is better at playing chess starting from different positions than a standard starting one.
In terms of weakly and strongly solved you could say that modern Stockfish is a step closer to strongly solving chess than previous one (it is able to win more winning positions and find draws in more difficult drawn positions). It is however not able to win from standard starting position (what we call chess).
It seems to me you're not familiar with how chess engines are tested and compared and your misunderstanding of the state of the affairs stems from that.
>>Is your suggestion that StockFish of 2020 will always draw against StockFish of 2023 if they have "unlimited time?"
You don't need unlimited time. You need less than 30 minutes per move on modern top of the line consumer CPU. Probably much less but I want to be safe. You also need an opening book if using Stockfish before NNUE. It had a very well known weakness in the openings and wasn't designed to be used without an opening book. If the goal was to ship a strongest engine in as-is state the programmers would add a few megabytes of book moves - resulting in still smaller executable than modern NNUE version. They didn't because everyone used their own book anyway.
If NN engine "contains" an opening book is a philosophical question heavily debated by chess programmers. It didn't matter for a long time until Alpha Zero team exploited it to make their engine look much better than it really was.
>>But I'm actually interested. Has anyone tried 2020 StockFish vs 2023 StockFish with huge time allowances?
It's pointless from starting position (with caveats above). That's also the reason correspondence chess is dead. Rare wins come from mistakes in move entry or failure to run an engine for 30 seconds for whatever reason. Top correspondence players - guys who used to run multiple huge machines for days or weeks to find any tiny edge with often custom software to guide the engine can't win vs bare unattended Stockfish running on a Threadripper for 30 minutes or less per move anymore.
Weakly solved is a computational notion that has nothing to do with how well humans and computers play. We are far from proving the game theoretic value of Chess. Even for proving that White has a draw; i.e. that White is not in zugzwang in the starting position. We may feel very strongly that the notion is absurd, but I doubt we'll see a proof in my lifetime.
"Solved" in TFA sense is about a class of proofs being discovered, not about merely digital chess software playing better (even if they win every game).
Yeah but this is not very useful concept in practical play and that was the context of my comment.
Chess is at different stage today than it was a few years ago. The difference is that no matter what resources and how much time your opponent have they will not beat you as long as you remember the line shown by your home PC.
I call it "weakly solved in practice" because it's exactly that: our (chess players) reality today is exactly the same as if chess was actually weakly solved.
Obviously. The point is that in interesting games (for example chess) the solution can't be memorized but parts of it can. The point is that in chess we have a solution as good as the mathematical one today (for all practical purposes). It's an interesting point because it matters for practical players - you're no longer afraid your opponent or their team can find "holes" (that is weak moves) in your preparation. You're now only afraid they will play moves you didn't expect.
Once/if chess is formally weakly solved it will change exactly nothing for human chess players. If your plan is to remember the solution you may just as well start learning top engine lines today.