That's funny Patzer, I usually tell people at work that I'm working on a matrix of an array when I play chess at work (I use notepad, and set up the board in FEN format...it looks like a series of letters, but it's the actual game...helps pass time when projects are slow).
To my knowledge, I don't believe there are any "proven formulas" for solving anything in chess that a human could do in their head. From a programming perspective, there are functions used to solve for mate, but it's dependent upon the program being created.
If there were formulas, I'd assume they'd be very well known, and chess would lose a lot of its charm. Who knows though? Anyone know for sure?
So I'm sort of a math geek, and seeing that I'm brand new to chess, I have to admit that I see an *immediate* (scary) correlation between a chessboard (and indeed, the entire game) and a matrix; commonly found throughout linear algebra.
I am wondering, for any of those in the know, are there are known/proven math-based strategies (to solve a composition or checkmate scenario) involving matrices/linear solutions? If so, please shine some light in the right direction for me! And if not, well.... I'm gonna break out my protractor.