🚀 go-pugleaf

 > Seeing that the number of possible moves in the game of chess
 > is finite, why can't a database of all possible positions be
 > set up and associated winning trees kept? This way instead of
 > a computer having to 'think' it would simply just look and 
 > respond.

Imagine a typical game (when played to conclusion) consists of 50 moves by each player. And in each position there are maybe 15 possible moves. Both these figures are probably low, but they'll do for now. This would give roughly 4*(10^117) possible games.

This gives you two problems. Firstly, if you assume you have the use of a computer with an analysis rate of maybe a million million positions per second, it would take a million million million million million million million million million million million million million million million million years to work it all out.

Secondly, you'd need a medium big enough to store it on. :-)

 /\/)ark