chess_pieceI was just at a conference where one of the lecturers told us that you can tell something about the personality of a player by watching his style when he plays Go. The audience responded that people often play games in order to exhibit personality traits that they can’t safely exhibit in real life. I thought that both points had merit.

Along comes this paper from two researchers at Birbeck College with a mathematical look at how to tell a player from his style of play in Chess.

It’s still rough work, but the results could not only be used to determine who a player is from the game transcript, but to program computers to play in a style similar to famous players.

(source)