I'm coming to this thread very late, and that you've already realised some of the issues. But as an ex-master and an ex-professional chess programmer, I thought I could add a few useful facts and figures. There are several ways of measuring the complexity of chess:
- The total number of chess games is approximately 10^(10^50). That number is unimaginably large.
- The number of chess games of 40 moves or less is around 10^40. That's still an incredibly large number.
- The number of possible chess positions is around 10^46.
- The complete chess search tree (Shannon number) is around 10^123, based on an average branching factor of 35 and an average game length of 80.
- For comparison, the number of atoms in the observable universe is commonly estimated to be around 10^80.
- All endgames of 6 pieces or less have been collated and solved.
My conclusion: while chess is theoretically solvable, we will never have the money, the motivation, the computing power, or the storage to ever do it.
