A CHESS COMPOSER OF TWO-MOVE MATE PROBLEMS

Abstract

Computerized chess composers of mate problems are rare. Moreover, so far they do not produce either impressive or creative new mate problems. In this paper, we describe a model called CHESS COMPOSER. This model uses a 64-bit representation, an ordered version of Iterative-Deepening Depth-First Search, and a quality function built with the help of two international masters in chess-problem composition. The result is applied on 100 known problems. It shows that the quality of 97 problems has been improved. Some of the improvements are rather impressive considering that all of the tested problems were composed by experienced composers. The new improved problems can be regarded as creative from the viewpoint of experts in chess compositions, because (1) they seem to be better, and (2) they are not too similar to the original problems.