The principles of beauty in chess were derived from the judgments of expert chess players. The principles were: (1) successfully violate heuristics, (2) use the weakest possible piece, (3) use all of the piece's power, (4) give more esthetic weight to the critical squares, (5) use one giant piece in place of several minor pieces, (6) employ themes, (7) avoid bland stereotopy, and (8) neither strangeness nor difficulty produce beauty.
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Stuart Margulies (1977) studied this question.
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