Version: v0.2

My pet UCI-compatible chess engine

• Move Generator: Extremely fast

  • Magic Bitboards: Uses classical magic bitboard lookup tables implementation for sliding pieces.
  • Intrinsics: Utilizes compiler intrinsics for bsr (bit scan reverse) and popcount (population count).
  • Hashed Positions for Kings and Knights: Fast move generation for kings and knights using lookup tables.
  • Branchless: Uses a lookup table of generators for different bitboard flags (rook, color, en passant).
  • Speed: 200 million nodes per second in perft.

• Alpha-Beta Search: Implements alpha-beta pruning to reduce the number of nodes evaluated.

• Killer Moves: Prioritizes strong candidate moves to improve search efficiency.

• Move Ordering: Uses heuristics to improve search speed by evaluating the most promising moves first.

• Principal Variation Search (PVS): Optimizes the search by assuming that the best move is found early.
• Zobrist Hashing: Efficiently stores game states to avoid redundant calculations.
• Hash Tables: Implements transposition tables to speed up position evaluations.
• Quiescence Search: Reduces the horizon effect by searching only relevant moves in critical positions.

• Implement SSE for move ordering.
• Improve move ordering.
• Add multithreading support.

• CMake 3.22.1 or later
• C++20-compatible compiler

git clone https://github.com/adidvar/chess-app
cd chess-app
cmake -B build -S . -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build --config Release
./build/uci/uci

After building, the engine will be ready to run as a UCI-compatible chess engine.

Contributions are welcome! If you find a bug, have an idea for an improvement, or want to add a new feature, feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request. Your contributions help improve the project!