Software for handling chess problems

This article covers computer software designed to solve, or assist people in creating or solving, chess problems – puzzles in which pieces are laid out as in a game of chess, and may at times be based upon real games of chess that have been played and recorded, but whose aim is to challenge the problemist to find a solution to the posed situation, within the rules of chess, rather than to play games of chess from the beginning against an opponent.

This is usually distinct from actually playing and analyzing games of chess. Many chess playing programs also have provision for solving some kinds of problem such as checkmate in a certain number of moves (directmates), and some also have support for helpmates and selfmates.

Software for chess problems can be used for creating and solving problems, including checking the soundness of a concept and position, storing it in a database, printing and publishing, and saving and exporting the problem. As such they can not only solve direct mates, helpmates and selfmates, but at times even problems with fairy pieces and other fairy chess problems. There have also been some attempts to have computers "compose" problems, largely autonomously.

First developed in 1980 by Ilkka Blom, Alybadix is a suite of chess problem solving programs for DOS and Commodore 64. Alybadix supports solving classical problems: selfmates, reflex mates, series mates, Circe, maximummers, and many Fairy types. It comes with a large problem collection and supports quality printing. In 1993, Schach und Spiele magazine considered Alybadix to be six times faster than other playing machines including the RISC 2500.

Diagram is a style file for LaTeX for typesetting chess diagrams. The style was originally created by Thomas Brand and further developed by Stefan Hoening, both based on ideas of a TeX package from Elmar Bartel. The style is used to produce the German problem chess magazine Die Schwalbe.

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