The Joy of Chess Programming

This is a memoir of my experiences with creating my own chess engine. It begins with first experiences with computer chess from books, magazines, movies and dedicated chess computers.

I witnessed a player by the name of Grant Crocker, playing 1.e3 and forced ChessChallenger to reply with 1...f5 (the Dutch defence). He then quickly won with 2.Qh5+?! g6 2.Be2 ?! gxh5??? 3.Bxh5#.

It progresses to when I had enough knowledge to write an amateur engine and was able to compete in computer chess tournaments.

Eventually my engine was strong enough to reach about 2400 ELo strength. It is able to find Fischers ...Be6 in the famous Game of the Century in a fraction of a second.

It gives insights into how chess engines work and how they select a move.

There are numerous tips on how we human players can learn from how computers play.

There are a number of reasons why you may be interested in how a chess program is written.

If so, you may be interested in my book How to Write a Chess Program.

I have another book on computer chess called Think Like a Computer which includes a number of games with engines playing engines at a shallow depth. This illustrates how engines evaluate positions.