system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How soon into a chess game could a computer calculate that you’re destined to lose?
gpt
Are you playing against said computer? Because in that case the computer could predict your loss from the start, since chess computers have surpassed even the greatest chess players.

But when it comes to analyzing an existing position and determining if one player will ultimately win or lose (assuming perfect play) is still a very complicated matter. The number of possible positions goes up exponentially with the number of moves made and other than checkmate and the "draw after three repeated moves" rule, there is no bound on how many moves can be made in a game.

Right now, the full set of possible moves and outcomes has been analyzed for games with 7 or fewer pieces. That is, 2 kings and 5 other pieces. If you're ever in a position with that number of pieces left on the board, then a computer could determine with certainty what the outcome of the game will be if both players would play perfectly.

Note that "play perfectly" is a strong assumption, even with computer players. The analysis of 7 piece positions yielded a position from which the winning play ended in a checkmate after more than 500 moves. Unless the player, computer or human, has access to the database with all 7 piece positions and their solution, they would not naturally come up with this 500+ move play to turn that specific position into a winning one.