What you're describing is this: Sudoku is a game, and in which to solve it, a computer program has an obvious method to limit possible permutations to compute

What you're describing is this: Sudoku is a game, and in which to solve it, a computer program has an obvious method to limit possible permutations to compute in finding a solution. In other words, it is not faced with the challenge of a requirement to compute permutations > 10^86 (roughly atoms in the observable universe). In contrast to sudoku, chess and go are games which have no yet discovered or theoretical method to limit permutations to solve, therefore to solve them you would be required to computer permutations > 10^86. So the problem is still with the number of permutations. Like I said in my other post: if you could develop a technique to reduce the number of permutations while still solving the optimal solution then you would be onto something. Right now no one has been able to dream up such a theory and there are a lot of very smart people who have worked on this problem.