Complexity in chess does not enhance aesthetics

Abstract

Approximately 40 years ago a researcher in psychology posited the controversial idea, among others, that complexity did not improve aesthetics. He used the example of the game of chess – where one would think complexity mattered positively – to illustrate this point. In this article, we explain how the same idea was tested but using a modern computational chess aesthetics model. We found, once again, and to a statistically significant degree, that the complexity of a chess puzzle or problem does not, on average, improve its aesthetic appeal. This suggests that making things more complicated than need be, simply to make the solution more difficult to find, especially in chess, should be avoided if improving aesthetics is the goal. This finding may be relevant to other artistic endeavours beyond chess as well.