[semi-extrinsic]

Chess is "solved by computers" today, as in they will outplay the best humans, but that's in part because chess provides you with perfect information about the enemy's position at all time.

Most (all?) esport games use fog-of-war (RTS) or level design (FPS) or some other mechanism that hides the enemy from you. Without that, esports games have also been "solved by computers" for decades.

There is of course a chess variant with fog-of-war (dark chess). As far as I know, computers don't beat humans at that.

[glenstein]

Solved by computers has a formal meaning, pertaining to absolute knowledge of the best move in every situation. My understanding is that chess not solved in that sense.

I understand what you mean though, so fair enough. But I think it's generally only worth being nitpicky about definitions if it's important to maintain them and I think in this case formally solved is one of the important ones.

[semi-extrinsic]

Yeah, you are absolutely right, this is why I put it in scare quotes. (I felt that this distinction, though important, was not relevant to the point I was making.)

[WJW]

If we take it outside the esports realm, you could say the vast majority of sports has been "solved" since cars are trivially faster than humans, trebuchets are way better for throwing things over long distances, hydraulic cylinders beat anyone at lifting heavy stuff, etc. Nobody is advocating to stop holding athletics events because machines can do the specific task better, so why should we stop holding chess events for humans because a computer can do it better?

[glenstein]

Well I agree with your conclusion, I do think chess is meaningfully different from your examples.

Chess is often played on software and tracked on software, and my understanding is that there are sometimes issues related to cheating.

You can't similarly use the strength of hydraulic cylinders to aid your strategic skills in a heavy lifting contest, or trebuchet skills, etc