Emergence of complex strategies in the evolution of chess endgame players

We examine a strong chess-endgame player, previously developed by us through genetic programming, focusing on the player's emergent capabilities and tactics in the context of a chess match. First, we provide a detailed description of the evolutionary approach by which our player was developed. Then, using a number of methods we analyze the evolved player's building blocks and their effect on play level. We conclude that evolution has found combinations of building blocks that are far from trivial and cannot be explained through simple combination -thereby indicating the possible emergence of complex strategies.