In won endgame positions, computers are incredibly good and never miss a trick.

But in positions where they’ve lost, they tend to play really badly, often with the king running away from where the battle is, in order to delay the mate as long as possible, rather than duking it out and making it difficult to win.

Is there some way to get computers to try the sort of defensive strategies that a human would use against another human?

Where the game might finish more quickly, but the human will have had some thinking to do.