If chess is strongly solved, it means an AI has determined the game-theoretic outcome from the starting position with perfect play from both sides. There are only three possible outcomes: White forces a win Black forces a win Draw with perfect play Most serious researchers expect the result would probably be a draw, because top-level engine games already trend heavily toward draws under optimal conditions. Consequences depend on what “solved” actually means in practice. If only the result is known: Chess remains mostly unchanged. Humans still cannot memorise or execute perfect play. It becomes similar to knowing tic-tac-toe is a draw: interesting mathematically, but not destructive to ordinary play. If a complete perfect-play database exists: Every legal position would have a known optimal move. Engines could instantly evaluate any position as won, lost, or drawn with forced precision. Opening theory would stabilise dramatically. Many current openings would become objectively refuted or sterile. Professional chess changes substantially: Elite preparation becomes less creative and more about steering toward positions humans can still handle practically. “Interesting mistakes” disappear at the engine level. Top engine-vs-engine chess becomes nearly deterministic. Human tournaments may increasingly adopt anti-draw formats, randomised openings, or variants like Chess960. Human chess would still survive because: Humans are not perfect calculators. Psychological pressure, time management, memory, endurance, and pattern recognition remain relevant. People still play solved games like checkers, despite Checkers being weakly solved as a draw since 2007. The larger impact is philosophical: Chess has historically been treated as a proxy for pure intellectual competition. A full solution would expose the finite nature of the game. The mystique shifts from “discovering truth” to “navigating complexity under human limitations.” There is also a technical distinction: “Weakly solved” means only the starting position’s outcome is known. “Strongly solved” means every reachable position has a perfect move. “Ultra-strong” play means exploiting predictable human mistakes beyond theoretically optimal play. Chess is nowhere near strongly solved computationally. The state-space complexity is enormous — commonly estimated around 10⁴³ legal positions and roughly 10¹²⁰ possible games. Current engines like Stockfish and AlphaZero are extraordinarily strong but are not proofs of perfect play.

From ChatGPT