When I first became interested in chess, one thing that initially confused me about the game is why it hasn’t been “solved” yet. After all, there are only 16 pieces on each side. The top players in the world are prodigies who earned the title of “grandmaster” before they could drive a car. They themselves are assisted in their preparation by supercomputers and chess engines that make the strongest computers of the 2000’s look like glorified toaster ovens. How could there still be room for innovation? For new moves?
Well, it turns out that the nature of exponential growth means that the number of possible chess positions balloons out of control pretty quickly — beyond the capability of even our strongest computers to solve.