Books on chess engines

Question

User-109470882 posted

I`m thinking about trying to build my first personal (not taken from book exercises) training program in C#. I thought about a chess engine, so that I can get used to some search algorithms in practice. I have already read about books that guide people exactly on building chess engines. In fact, I would like to use such a tutorial in order to build a Shogi engine (japanese chess), which will have some different rules and, probably, very different heuristics, but should use the same basic structure (I imagine).

I thought about going through the engine design, then trying to integrate some databases and, finally, make it play on the net, such that I would cover those three aspects of programming while studying and having some fun, at the same time.

Is there a good book you would recommend?

Answer 1

User-434868552 posted

@ nettomb

Hi again ... regarding your other thread, you're welcome.

regarding this post, here are a few pointers i promised.

via Google:   computer how to play legal chess

you should find this downloadable .pdf as one of the search results, it's a classic paper:
http://archive.computerhistory.org/projects/chess/related_materials/text/2-0%20and%202-1.Programming_a_computer_for_playing_chess.shannon/2-0%20and%202-1.Programming_a_computer_for_playing_chess.shannon.062303002.pdf

CLAUDE E. SHANNON:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_number

explore this tree:  http://archive.computerhistory.org/projects/chess/
especially:  http://archive.computerhistory.org/projects/chess/related_materials/text/

if you can get hold of this, perhaps via inter-library loan, it's worth reading:

"How to program a computer to play legal chess", Algorithm 50, p. 208 ff.
   "The Computer Journal", Volume 13, Number 2, May 1970
http://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/toc/compj.html#13(2):May:1970

World Champion Botvinnik, also a computer scientist, wrote:
http://www.amazon.ca/Computers-Long-Range-Planning-Michail-Botvinnik/dp/0387900128
   "Computers, Chess and Long-Range Planning"

Borland a long time ago had a game package ... tons of source code plus a book:
you might try via Google:  borland software turbo pascal game programming book

the Borland book had detailed information on a number of games, plus Turbo Pascal source code on diskette.
http://www.borland.com/
http://www.borland.com/contact/ may be able to help you.

via Google:  david levy chess books

David Levy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Levy_(chess_player)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Levy_(chess_player)#Books_by_Levy

Levy has written quite a bit about computer chess (i am not familiary with all of these)*:
  [search Amazon.com:  david levy computer chess]

• Levy, David and Newborn, Monroe, More Chess and Computers: The Microcomputer Revolution, The Challenge Match, Computer Science Press, Potomac, Maryland, and Batsford, London, 1980. ISBN 0-914894-07-2.
• Computer Gamesmanship: Elements of Intelligent Game Design, by David Levy, 1983, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0-671-49532-1.
• The Chess Computer Handbook ISBN 0-7134-4220-4
• Heuristic Programming in Artificial Intelligence (with D. F. Beal), 1989. ISBN 0-7458-0778-X  ()
• How Computers Play Chess (with Monroe Newborn) ISBN 4-87187-801-5
• Computer Games I ISBN 4-87187-802-3
• Computer Games II ISBN 4-87187-803-1
• Computer Chess Compendium ISBN 4-87187-804-X
• Computer Gamesmanship ISBN 4-87187-805-8

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_Informant ... http://www.chessinformant.rs/
 ... they "may" have published collections of computer chess games ... i'm uncertain about this.

searching amazon.com with:    chess computer programming
brings up 252 very interesting titles, including some of those already mentioned.

Tip:  before you tackle chess, you might want to start first with Tic-Tac-Toe, a.k.a. x's and o's and "noughts and crosses" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tic-tac-toe); then checkers, a.k.a. draughts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_draughts; also interesting is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_draughts) ... you might also consider Nine's Men's Morris, a.k.a. the mill game (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Men's_Morris).

regards ~~ gerry

* you might try contacting http://www.chess-math.org/ ... recently, i was forced to down size and in that process, i got rid of many boxes of books; my chess collection went to http://www.chess-math.org/ ... it included some of the above titles ... you might enquire as to what they've got left.

Answer 2

User-109470882 posted

Once again you're being very helpful.

After some extra research on the net, I have found some links on a forum that are being very helpful, so I thought about posting them here.

"

http://www.top-5000.nl/authors/rebel/chess840.htm
http://www.brucemo.com/compchess/programming/index.htm
http://www.frayn.net/beowulf/theory.html
http://www.cis.uab.edu/hyatt/pubs.html
http://chess.verhelst.org/about/

Many people recommend studying TSCP: http://www.tckerrigan.com/Chess/TSCP

http://www.superchessengine.com/programming.htm
http://www.cs.biu.ac.il/~davoudo/tutorials.html "

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