♟ Andoma

My blog post: Building My Own Chess Engine

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A chess engine which implements:

• Alpha-beta pruning for move searching
• Move ordering based off heuristics like captures and promotions
• Tomasz Michniewski's Simplified Evaluation Function for board evaluation and piece-square tables
• A slice of the Universal Chess Interface (UCI) to allow challenges via lichess.org
• A command-line user interface

It uses Python 3.8 with Mypy type hints and unit + integration tests.

See Contributing to help out!

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Install

pip install -r requirements.txt

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Use it via command-line

Start the engine with:

python ui.py

Start as [w]hite or [b]lack:
w

  8 ♖ ♘ ♗ ♕ ♔ ♗ ♘ ♖
  7 ♙ ♙ ♙ ♙ ♙ ♙ ♙ ♙
  6 · · · · · · · ·
  5 · · · · · · · ·
  4 · · · · · · · ·
  3 · · · · · · · ·
  2 ♟ ♟ ♟ ♟ ♟ ♟ ♟ ♟
  1 ♜ ♞ ♝ ♛ ♚ ♝ ♞ ♜
    a b c d e f g h

Enter a move like g1h3:

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Use it as a UCI engine

The only interfaces that Andoma currently supports are ShailChoksi/lichess-bot and the command-line UI (ui.py). Debug information and configuration options are minimal compared to a full UCI engine.

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Start the engine with:

python main.py

An example interaction with the engine (responses have #):

uci
# id name Andoma
# id author Andrew Healey & Roma Parramore
# uciok
position startpos moves e2e4
go
# bestmove g8f6

Also accepts a FEN string:

position fen rnbqk1nr/p1ppppbp/1p4p1/8/2P5/2Q5/PP1PPPPP/RNB1KBNR b KQkq - 0 1

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See the UCI interface doc for more information on communicating with the engine.

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Lichess.org

The UCI protocol slice that's implemented by this engine means you can play it via lichess.org by using ShailChoksi/lichess-bot (a bridge between Lichess API and chess engines) and a BOT account.

The engine file required by lichess-bot may be generated using pyinstaller.

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Tests

There are unit tests for the engine, UI, and evaluation modules. Mate-in-two/mate-in-three puzzles are being added.

python -m unittest discover test/

Type hints:

pip install -r requirements-dev.txt

mypy .

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Contributing

Raise an issue to propose a bug fix or feature (or pick up an existing one).

I (@healeycodes) am happy to help you along the way.

For coding style: look at the existing files, use Mypy types, use PEP8, and add a test for any change in functionality.

Please run the tests locally before submitting a PR.