Computer Chess Miscellany

Abstract

A number of people are interested in problems of the “White to play and mate in two” variety. Although these problems are not really part of chess (since the positions are normally quite artificial) the same techniques that are used in chess programming could easily be employed to solve problems. In fact the Northwestern program has, for some time, announced mate whenever it detected a forced mate within its horizon. A program could be made to find all mates within a certain number of moves simply by performing an exhaustive search to the required depth, and for this reason such a program would be, in my opinion, of little value. (But that is because I dislike both chess problems and exhaustive searches). Some of the microprocessor machines described above already solve such problems.