if you "knew" it in some way - i.e. you could play perfectly in tournament conditions - that is a step above having it written down in an enormous book or a computer, I agree that could be worth more.

Dear Aliens,

If you are reading this thread, please abduct me tonight and implant my brain with an undetectable alien link that feeds me the correct move in all chess situations from your alien created database which contains the solution to chess. Obviously this link will be very technologically advanced as it will be receiving signals from TWO separate parallel universes but I'll accept the risk of cancer.

Sincerely, Pyramidscheme

More interesting is how much would it be worth if you couldn't "cheat". No implanted computer chips or trips to the bathroom between moves.

Obviously it would make opening study MUCH easier. If you knew what your opponent played in advance you could always find any crushing novelties that might exist in his lines. You would never play a bad opening yourself.

It would help a lot but certainly wouldn't turn a 2200 into a GM.

Probably the best way to monetize the solution would be to team up with some top GM and do his opening analysis for him.

Another interesting follow up on this idea is the meta-game. Having the perfect solution to chess in your mind would be worth a lot... until the moment people realized that you had it. Then your action would completely dry up.

How many games could you play against top GMs, never once losing, and probably not drawing that often either, before people got suspicious? Optimal would be to intentionally lose some games, and keep your scores just high enough to take first place in most tourneys (specifically, the ones with the highest prize pools), while never winning by that large of a margin. And possibly even not always winning every tourney you enter.

Additionally, you'd want to play as few as possible of the solution moves that "make no sense" to observers. The weirdest looking wins would be the best ones to pass up, and throw, probably. Anything to minimize suspicion. You want people to look at you and say "He's the best chess player in the world", not "He plays like he's solved chess."

That's what we learned from the UB/AP cheating scandal. As long as you just look like you're really, really good but within the realm of possible then you're golden. Win every single game you play and you'll raise too much suspicion.

lol @ the idea of trying to avoid raising suspicion. I don't think people would ever suspect you had the solution to chess no matter how well you played. But yeah intentionally losing sometimes to try and get action does make sense.

If a previous unknown went 11.5/12 in a tourney with an average rating of 2700, while playing half a dozen moves per game that make absolutely no sense according to any known principles of the game, people may not jump to the conclusion that he must have solved chess, but the structure of the highest levels of chess competition will probably change pretty damn fast, and chess will quickly get a lot less profitable for said player.

Fair enough. Maybe more to decrease rumors about cheating in general than having solved chess specifically. But again, there's no way I could avoid that as my rating will suddenly spike like crazy.

if you were stronger than any computer how could you possibly be cheating.

I mean you could agree to play naked with no one in the room other than your opponent and never get up or leave the room for any reason. Should satisfy everyone.

I was assuming that if you had a solution to chess it was not something anyone could memorize. If you have it in your head with no outside communication, then you simply are that good.

I would also say that the moves of perfect chess would make good general chess sense in retrospect. We can't be that far off after hundreds of years of human analysis and decades of computer analysis. But you would likely see is some very subtle things. There would be games in which you beat super strong GMs, but where no computer or human can later pinpoint the decisive mistake. Or you might play moves like Bb5 a6 Bc4 instead of Bc4 first because there is one endgame in one variation where having the pawn on a6 instead of a7 hurts. If this variation never comes up, it will look rather strange. And if it does come up everyone will be wondering how the hell you could have foreseen this.