mherzl / chess-engine Goto Github PK

This is the beginning of a chess engine. The idea is to store any piece on any square, using 4 64-bit words to record the board state (see rust/chess.rs/'struct Board'). It is designed so that each square may contain any one of the 13 options: (empty, and for each of the two colors: pawn, knight, bishop, rook, queen, or king).

The content of each square will therefore require ln[13]/ln[2] (~3.7) bits. For the board's 64 squares that multiplies to 237 bits. The 256 bits of the 4 64-bit integers are therefore sufficient.

To compute game-tree searches, e.g. using minimax, it is helpful to have an efficient means of storing board positions, so that a large number of positions can be held in memory.

It is also helpful to be able to rapidly calculate possible next-move positions from a given initial position. This board-position model has been designed with that in mind. Calculation of possible next moves will be the next step forward for this project.