Chess is only solved for positions with 7 pieces or less (and some configurations of 8 pieces [2]), so we're far from knowing best play from the 32-piece starting position.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zugzwang
[2] https://www.chess.com/blog/Rocky64/eight-piece-tablebases-a-...
White cannot have a tiny tiny edge against perfect play.
Either it is possible to force a win against perfect play, or it's not. So white is either winning or the game is a draw (or black is able to force a win against white's perfect play, but that's a whole different level of unlikely).
When talking about perfect play, terms like "tiny edge" lose their meaning.
However the consensus guess is that perfect play yields a draw.
Just like we can efficiently find approximate solutions for the traveling salesman problem (that are at most 50% longer than the optimal solution), these heuristics have not much to do with the optimal solution.
> I could imagine that a perfect play completely contradicts common chess theory.
So can anyone. Nobody knows what perfect chess play is. Our best guess though is that whatever your opponent plays you can always force a draw before they can win.
Unfortunately it leaves us in the position of not having much to go by, if expert experience doesn't help analyze the game.
I wonder how different a chess engine and optimal play look for the reduced sized boards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connect_Four#Mathematical_solu...
In general, there’s no guarantee of first mover’s advantage. For example, Hexapawn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexapawn) is a win for black on some boards (https://web.archive.org/web/20050330222720/http://www.chessv...). Versions that are more complex than chess and are a win for black may exist.
So until proven otherwise it's still possible that its theoretical win for white, theoretical draw or theoretical win for black as i understand it.
Unlike tic-tac-toe we're not certain if it is a win or a draw for perfect players.
The chess analogue to this would be that there is a single opening move for white that a perfect player can guarantee a win from, or maybe a limited set of opening moves.
In fact, there is a variant of chess where this the case, namely "pawns-only chess", where 1.b4, 1.c4, 1.f4, and 1.g4 are winning for white, whereas all other first moves are a win for black with perfect play.
https://chess.stackexchange.com/questions/8755/is-the-result...
