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chess.md
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@ -66,15 +66,15 @@ Fun fact: there seem to be **almost no black people in [chess](chess.md)** :D th
{ [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpXy041BIlA) is an absolutely amazing video about weird chess algorithms :) And here is a very lovely article about someone's memories of his old competitive chess program: https://www.lkessler.com/brutefor.shtml. ~drummyfish }
Chess is of some interest to [computer scientists](compsci.md) and [programmers](programming.md), computers not only help people play chess, train their skills, analyze positions and perform research of games, but they also allow mathematical analysis of chess as such and provide a platform for things such as [artificial intelligence](ai.md).
Chess is quite interesting for [computer scientists](compsci.md) and [programmers](programming.md), computers not only help people play chess, train their skills, analyze positions and perform research of games, but they also allow mathematical analysis of chess as such and provide a platform for things such as [artificial intelligence](ai.md).
Chess software is usually separated to **[libraries](library.md)**, **chess engines** and **[frontends](frontend.md)**. Chess engine is typically a [CLI](cli.md) program capable of playing chess but also doing other things such as evaluating arbitrary position, hinting best moves, saving and loading games etc. -- commonly the engine has some kind of custom CLI interface (flags, interactive commands it understands, ...) plus a support of some standardized text communication protocol, most notably XBoard (older one, more [KISS](kiss.md)) and UCI (newer, more [bloated](bloat.md)). There is also typically support for standardized formats such as FEN (way of encoding a chess position as a text string), PGN (way of encoding games as text strings) etc. Frontends on the other hand are usually [GUI](gui.md) programs (in this case also called *boards*) that help people interact with the underlying engine, however there may also be similar non-GUI programs of this type, e.g. those that automatically run tournaments of multiple engines.
**Chess [software](software.md)** is usually separated to **[libraries](library.md)**, **chess engines** and **[frontends](frontend.md)**. Library is just that -- a programming library that will help a programmer create some kind of chess program. Chess engine on the other hand is a complete program whose main purpose is to compute good chess moves, it is typically a [CLI](cli.md) program capable of playing chess but also doing other things such as evaluating arbitrary positions, hinting best moves, saving and loading games etc. -- commonly the engine has some kind of custom CLI interface (flags, interactive commands it understands, ...) plus a support of some standardized text communication protocol, most notably XBoard (older one, more [KISS](kiss.md)) and/or UCI (newer, more [bloated](bloat.md)). It is also a must for an engine to support other standard formats such as **FEN** (Forsyth–Edwards notation, way of encoding a chess position as a text string), **PGN** (portable game notation, way of encoding games as text strings) etc. And then there are frontends (also called *boards*) -- these are, almost by definition, [GUI](gui.md) programs that help people interact with the underlying engine (and do other things like play against other humans, annotate games and so on). There may also exist other kind of programs, e.g. tournament managers that will automatically run a tournament of several chess engines, calculate their strength etc. As seen, the chess "ecosystem" is pretty modular (it is possible to easily drop-in replace any part of your chess system as they are all just black boxes with the same interface) and the whole system is based on standardized, relatively simple plain text protocols, i.e. this is all very close to [Unix philosophy](unix_philosophy.md) and [good design](lrs.md). This is an example of how games should be implemented.
Computers have already surpassed the best humans in their playing strength (we can't exactly compute an engine's [Elo](elo.md) as it depends on hardware used, but generally the strongest would rate high above 3000 FIDE). As of 2023 the strongest chess engine is widely agreed to be the [FOSS](foss.md) engine [Stockfish](stockfish.md), with other strong engines being e.g. Leela Chess Zero (also FOSS), AlphaZero ([proprietary](proprietary.md) by [Google](google.md)) or Komodo Dragon (proprietary). [GNU Chess](gnu_chess.md) is a pretty strong [free software](free_software.md) engine by [GNU](gnu.md). There are world championships for chess engines such as the *Top Chess Engine Championship* or *World Computer Chess Championship*. [CCRL](https://ccrl.chessdom.com/ccrl/4040/) is a list of chess engines along with their Elo ratings deduced from tournaments they run. Despite the immense strength of modern engines, there are still some specific artificial situations in which a human beats the computer (shown e.g. in [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9IZWgArWUE) video); this probably won't last long though.
Computers have already surpassed the best humans in their playing strength (we can't exactly compute an engine's [Elo](elo.md) as it depends on hardware used, but generally the strongest would rate high above 3000 FIDE). As of 2023 the strongest chess engine is widely agreed to be the [FOSS](foss.md) engine **[Stockfish](stockfish.md)**, with other strong engines being e.g. Leela Chess Zero (also FOSS), AlphaZero ([proprietary](proprietary.md) by [Google](google.md)) or Komodo Dragon (proprietary). [GNU Chess](gnu_chess.md) is a pretty strong [free software](free_software.md) engine by [GNU](gnu.md). There are world championships for chess engines such as the *Top Chess Engine Championship* or *World Computer Chess Championship*. [CCRL](https://ccrl.chessdom.com/ccrl/4040/) is a list of chess engines along with their Elo ratings deduced from tournaments they run. Despite the immense strength of modern engines, there are still some specific artificial situations in which a human beats the computer (shown e.g. in [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9IZWgArWUE) video); this probably won't last long though.
The first chess computer that beat the world champion (at the time Gary Kasparov) was famously [Deep Blue](deep_blue.md) in 1997. [Alan Turing](turing.md) himself has written a chess playing algorithm but at his time there were no computers to run it, so he executed it by hand -- nowadays the algorithm has been implemented on computers (there are bots playing this algorithm e.g. on lichess).
Playing strength is not the only possible measure of chess engine quality, of course -- for example there are people who try to make the **smallest chess programs** (see [countercomplex](countercomplex.md) and [golfing](golf.md)). As of 2022 the leading programmer of smallest chess programs seems to be Óscar Toledo G. (https://nanochess.org/chess.html). Unfortunately his programs are [proprietary](proprietary.md), even though their source code is public. The programs include Toledo Atomchess (392 [x86](x86.md) instructions), Toledo Nanochess (world's smallest [C](c.md) chess program, 1257 non-blank C characters) and Toledo Javascript chess (world's smallest [Javascript](javascript.md) chess program). He won the [IOCCC](ioccc.md). Another small chess program is micro-Max by H. G. Muller (https://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/max-src2.html, 1433 C characters, Toledo claims it is weaker than his program). Other engines try to be strong while imitating human play (making human moves, even mistakes), most notably Maia which trains several neural networks that play like different rated human players.
Playing strength is not the only possible measure of chess engine quality, of course -- for example there are people who try to make the **smallest chess programs** (see [countercomplex](countercomplex.md) and [golfing](golf.md)). As of 2022 the leading programmer of smallest chess programs seems to be Oscar Toledo G. (https://nanochess.org/chess.html). Unfortunately his programs are [proprietary](proprietary.md), even though their source code is public. The programs include Toledo Atomchess (392 [x86](x86.md) instructions), Toledo Nanochess (world's smallest [C](c.md) chess program, 1257 non-blank C characters) and Toledo Javascript chess (world's smallest [Javascript](javascript.md) chess program). He won the [IOCCC](ioccc.md). Another small chess program is micro-Max by H. G. Muller (https://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/max-src2.html, 1433 C characters, Toledo claims it is weaker than his program). Other engines try to be strong while imitating human play (making human moves, even mistakes), most notably Maia which trains several neural networks that play like different rated human players.
{ Nanochess is actually pretty strong, in my testing it easily beat [smallchesslib](smallchesslib.md) Q_Q ~drummyfish }