# Is there any hope to solve the game chess?

I heard about an estimate how many legal positions there are in a chess game. There are roughly ${10}^{40}$.

Is it realistic that this amound of positions can be checked in the near future ?

Or is the only hope to solve chess to find some amazing properties to cut the tree of possibilities drastically ?

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Solving a game can mean (at least) three different things: (1) knowing the result from the starting position, (2) plus knowing a strategy that gives the optimal result for a player whatever his opponents moves are, or (3) knowing the optimal moves and the result in every legal position. Which one do you mean (altough the answer may be "no" in any case)? – JiK Dec 20 '13 at 13:30
Pesonally, I would be content with (1), but probably (1) will imply (2) because a nonconstructive proof would be a miracle. – Peter Dec 20 '13 at 13:42

It should be noted that the vast majority of those $10^{40}$ legal positions are so unbalanced and so "absurd" that would never occur in any game between knowledgeable players not playing totally random moves. As such they're basically irrelevant for the problem of "solving chess". Nevertheless the number of "reasonable" positions and games is so huge that after more than 150 years of grandmaster games, the question is still very open, although one may argue that the game is about even.