Gnuchess
GNU Chess is a computer program for playing chess, and is
thus a computer chess program.
It is free software (in both the no-cost and as-in-freedom senses)
licensed under the terms of the General Public License, and
is maintained by collaborating developers.
It is often used in conjunction with a GUI program such as XBoard.
In 1998-1999 GNU Chess underwent a transition to version 5.
Version 5 was essentially a complete rewrite from scratch of GNU Chess to eliminate spaghetti code
and replace antiquated data structures with more advanced computer chess
implementation techniques. These included bitboards,
a search algorithm called Principal Variation Search (PVS)
(a variation by Professor Tony Marsland of alpha-beta minimax),
and full end-leaf evaluation.
It uses a number of other techniques to improve its performance, such as an opening book (generated by
studying master games) to help it start well and hash tables storing previously-analyzed positions
to prevent wasting time re-analyzing already analyzed positions.
External Links
- http://www.gnu.org/software/chess/
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