Alan Turing, a pioneering figure in the world of Computer Science, is often celebrated for his work on breaking the Enigma code during World War II. However, one of his lesser-known achievements is creating one of the first chess algorithms — a small yet significant early step in the development of artificial intelligence systems.
This is exciting! We’re nearly ready to start simulating a whole game of Chess. There’s just a few more components we need.
To begin, let’s first consider what information we need to encode to fully describe a move.
In standard chess move notation, we are given only the type of piece, and it’s new location. E.g. Ne2 which indicates that a knight should be moved to the square e2.
This is part 2 in a series of articles documenting my process of building a chess engine. I hope to share insights from my previous experience, and explain some of the concepts and techniques I’ll be using. If you haven’t already read part 1, I’d strongly recommend taking a look before reading part 2. You can check it out at the link above.
Time to pick up where we left of…
This is not my first rodeo.
I’ve built a chess engine before, but the results were… let’s say… underwhelming.
Don’t get me wrong, the program worked; it was able to play a full game of chess, and for that, I give it credit. But let’s face it, it was terrible at chess.
