ChessCore

Chess Engine Implemented in .net core

Winboard/Xboard Compatible Chess Engine Written in C#/.NET Core. ChessCore has 2 modes XBoard Protocol which allows you to use Winboard Chess GUI http://hgm.nubati.net or Console mode which shows the current chess board using ASCII.

To Run type in: dotnet ChessCore.dll

Build

dotnet build ChessCore.sln -nologo

Testing

The repository now includes a dedicated NUnit test project: ChessCoreEngine.Tests.

Run all tests

This includes the depth-5 perft baseline and takes longer.

dotnet test ChessCore.sln -nologo

Run fast tests only

This excludes slow tests (currently depth-5 perft).

dotnet test ChessCore.sln -nologo --filter "TestCategory!=Slow"

Perft baselines

PerftBaselineTests validates move-generation against known start-position node counts:

• Depth 1: 20
• Depth 2: 400
• Depth 3: 8902
• Depth 4: 197281
• Depth 5: 4865609 (Slow category)

Run perft tests only

Fast perft set (depth 1-4):

dotnet test ChessCoreEngine.Tests/ChessCoreEngine.Tests.csproj -nologo --filter "FullyQualifiedName~PerftBaselineTests&FullyQualifiedName~InitialPosition_PerftMatchesKnownCounts"

Depth-5 perft only:

dotnet test ChessCoreEngine.Tests/ChessCoreEngine.Tests.csproj -nologo --filter "FullyQualifiedName~PerftBaselineTests&FullyQualifiedName~InitialPosition_PerftDepth5_MatchesKnownCount"

All perft tests:

dotnet test ChessCoreEngine.Tests/ChessCoreEngine.Tests.csproj -nologo --filter "FullyQualifiedName~PerftBaselineTests"

CI Recommendation

For pull requests, run fast validation:

dotnet build ChessCore.sln -nologo
dotnet test ChessCore.sln -nologo --filter "TestCategory!=Slow"

For scheduled/nightly runs, include full validation:

dotnet test ChessCore.sln -nologo

About

This project is a product of a rather rash decision in mid 2008 to learn to program my own Chess Game, hence began my journey into the art of computer chess. The main goal of the original project was to learn about how computers play chess while producing a chess engine that is easily understood and well documented. I feel that goal has now been achieved. As the next step I decided to release the full source code for my chess engine under the MIT license to allow other developers to learn and contribute to further improve & extend my chess engine.

The documentation & tutorial on how to build a chess engine can be accessed in the following 2 formats:

PDF

http://www.adamberent.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/GuideToProgrammingChessEngine.pdf

Website

http://adamberent.com/home/chess/computer-chess/