Elon Musk shared his opinion on the solvability of chess. Elon believes that the number of sensible move branches is small, and thinks that chess will be fully solved in the future.

Elon Musk

Elon Musk

World's richest entrepreneur

“The actual number of moves that are not utterly stupid in chess is tiny and chess will be fully solved one day”

Chess is completely solved for any position with seven or fewer pieces on the board including both Kings. This was achieved using chess engines and Endgame tablebases in 2018.

At the start of the game, a player has 20 possible moves. After both sides complete Move 1, there are over 400 possible continuations. By Move 4, this number increases to approximately 200,000. On Move 40, the number of possible move variations reaches up to 10 to the 40th power. This number is comparable to the total number of atoms in the observable universe.

Credit: Gage Skidmore