I came across this when surfing around for chess compositions on the internet. I wasn’t looking for problems, but forums about them.
Chesthetica is program, not available for download, that generates chess problems. The author is has a PhD in something computer related. I guess he started this whole idea when he was working on his PhD in 2006.
Apparently he publishes some of the problems and has a couple books about the subject, but I get the feeling he uses the program primarily for research purposes. He studied computer AI, but is quick to point out that Chesthetica is not using computer AI in it’s programming.
Still it an interesting concept.
I’m pretty sure he won’t release the program because he doesn’t want to dilute the work of all the people who have hand crafted and composed chess problems and endgame studies over the years. YAST a/k/a Yet Another Chess Problem Database has over 453k problems in it’s database.
Harold van der Heijden’s Endgame Studies V is over 85k problems and a new version is going to be released next year.
So, anybody have thoughts on computer generated chess problems?
I personally think it’s interesting, but I agree that the program shouldn’t be in the wild. It would dilute the efforts of humans, and it would also open the door for morally corrupt individuals to use that to compose problems and then start submitting them to various contests and websites as their own hand crafted problems.