Inspiration
I always liked chess and thought it would be fitting to make a chess engine for my first hackathon. Obviously the title is a nod to StockFish, the strongest chess engine in the world as of now.
What it does
This chess engine plays against the user using UCI notation. See the Github for project files and more details.
How I built it
This project was built in Python script using PyCharm. python-chess has been of huge help in move generation.
Challenges we ran into
Optimization. I severely underestimated the amount of calculations the engine would need to make. The first version was built in plain Minimax and could not calculate beyond 2 moves ahead. Then I found Alpha-Beta Pruning which enabled my engine to calculate one more move in the future.
What we learned
I got to know the Minimax algorithm and Alpha-Beta Pruning during this project.
What's next for StockYu Chess Engine
Optimization remains the top priority. I would find methods to optimize my engine for it to calculate beyond 3 moves ahead in a reasonable time.
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