On Primitive Recursive Characteristics of Chess

Abstract

Several characteristics of chess are investigated with methods of computability and number theories. It is shown that for an unfinished game it is primitive recursively decidable whether the game is winnable, drawable, or absolutely losable within a specified number of future moves for the player whose turn it is to play on the last board of the game. It is also shown that there exist primitive recursive procedures to compute optimal continuations of unfinished games within specified numbers of future moves and that the set of chess games is recursive.