Comment by _ache_
4 days ago
It is terrible in the opening and a little better in the middle game (if you didn't win already, I mean if you played 4-5 random moves).
I think you can improve it a lot by taking into account its own position. I mean, moving forward isn't very important want you are under the menace of a checkmate somewhere else.
I tried playing against it, I didn't have many expectations, but even though I blundered a bishop on move 3 due to a mouse-slip, I could still checkmate it in 6 moves. To me it seemed like it makes random moves.
The algorithm behind it is very basic.
Chose the most aggressive move (in term of pieces value and check-mate), if none is aggressive, it takes on of the move equally non aggressive.
Didn't remember the depth of the algorithm but it was very simple C code, could check quickly. It should be able to find a mate in 2 or 3 if it was in position of having one.
I didn't check the correctness of the algorithm, just the intention.
I thought it played worse than random moves and couldn't understand how it could beat anyone (no offence to OP).
But if you intentionally hang your pieces, it tends to take them. And it will try to promote pawns in the endgame. So it is possible for it to stumble upon a checkmate, though in my effort where I gave away all my pieces, it instead found the only move to stalemate once it had K+Q+R vs K.
It tries to promote pawns in the opening and mid-game too.
It’s terrible everywhere tbh, it has zero awareness of how dangerous the f7 square is in the opening, you can pretty much just mate it by landing the queen on f7 with a piece covering it every time.
I applaud the effort but not sure I see the point, I had a more capable chess playing program than this on a zx speccy in the 80’s.