The Joy of Chess Programming This is a memoir of my experiences with creating my own chess engine. It begins with first experiences with computer chess from books, magazines, movies and dedicated chess computers. It progresses to when I had enough knowledge to write an amateur engine and was able to compete in computer chess tournaments. Eventually my engine was strong enough to reach about 2400 ELO strength. It is able to find Bobby Fischer's ...Be6 in the famous Game of the Century in a fraction of a second. It gives insights into how chess engines work and how they select a move. There are numerous tips on how we human players can learn from how computers play. There are a number of reasons why you may be interested in how a chess program is written. If so, you may be interested in my bookHow to Write a Chess Program. I have another book on computer chess called Think Like a Computer which includes a number of games with engines playing engines at a shallow depth. This illustrates how engines evaluate positions.

It now appears possible - even likely - that within a few decades and within certain specialized domains, the computer will be more intelligent than we ourselves. What was unimaginable a few years ago is happening today with alarming rapidity. A small piece of silicon, no larger than a thumbnail, can exhibit more "intelligence" than the best human brains. This book attempts to satisfy two different goals. It presents a comprehensive history of computer chess along with many rare examples of the play of early programs. These examples contain both amazing strokes of brilliance and inexplicable catastrophes; they will give the reader a dear perspective of the pioneer days of computer chess. In contrast, contemporary programs are capable of defeating International Grandmasters; the text contains several recent examples including a remarkable victory over former World Champion Anatoly Karpov. The remainder of the book is devoted to an explanation of how the various parts of a chess program are designed and how they function. Readers who have no knowledge of computers will gain insight into how they "think." Readers who own a personal computer and who want to write their own chess programs will find sufficient information in this book to enable them to make a good start.

The First Expert Guide to Static Analysis for Software Security! Creating secure code requires more than just good intentions. Programmers need to know that their code will be safe in an almost infinite number of scenarios and configurations. Static source code analysis gives users the ability to review their work with a fine-toothed comb and uncover the kinds of errors that lead directly to security vulnerabilities. Now, there’s a complete guide to static analysis: how it works, how to integrate it into the software development processes, and how to make the most of it during security code review. Static analysis experts Brian Chess and Jacob West look at the most common types of security defects that occur today. They illustrate main points using Java and C code examples taken from real-world security incidents, showing how coding errors are exploited, how they could have been prevented, and how static analysis can rapidly uncover similar mistakes. This book is for everyone concerned with building more secure software: developers, security engineers, analysts, and testers.

Teaches Chess Players the Principles of Chess Programming & How the Computer "Decides" which Move to Make. Teaches How to Write Their Own Chess Programs

At the U.S. Championship in 1989, Stuart Rachels seemed bound for the cellar. Ranked last and holding no IM norms, the 20-year-old amateur from Alabama was expected to get waxed by the American top GMs of the day that included Seirawan, Gulko, Dzindzichashvili, deFirmian, Benjamin and Browne. Instead, Rachels pulled off a gigantic upset and became the youngest U.S. Champion since Bobby Fischer. Three years later he retired from competitive chess, but he never stopped following the game. In this wide-ranging, elegantly written, and highly personal memoir, Stuart Rachels passes on his knowledge of chess. Included are his duels against legends such as Kasparov, Anand, Spassky, Ivanchuk, Gelfand and Miles, but the heart of the book is the explanation of chess ideas interwoven with his captivating stories. There are chapters on tactics, endings, blunders, middlegames, cheating incidents, and even on how to combat that rotten opening, the Réti. Rachels offers a complete and entertaining course in chess strategy. At the back are listed 110 principles of play—bits of wisdom that arise naturally in the book’s 24 chapters. Every chess player will find it difficult to put this sparkling book down. As a bonus, it will make you a better player.

IntroductionThere are a number of reasons why you may be interested in how a chess program is written: You are learning programming and interested in learning something different. You are a programmer who is interesting in developing their programming experience. You are a chess enthusiast and would like to improve your chess by learning how chess programs work. You are interested in developing a chess program and playing against it. You are interested in developing a chess program and having it play other engines. You do need to be an expert programmer to understand this book.The code is written as simply as possible.The code is designed to be simple even for intermediate and even novice programmers. If you are not a programmer, but am interested in chess, this book may be of interest. The book includes the source code for a complete chess engine. The program can be compiled using a freely downloadable compiler.You can alter the code and see if you can make it stronger. The engine is strong enough to beat most social players. Features of the engine include: The ability to load positions. The ability to play in chess engine tournaments, with programs such as Arena. Its very fast. It displays the best line of play for both sides. Detects reality of opponent's pieces. Detects checkmate. Detects draws by repetition, 50 move rule, statemate or reduction of material. EvaluationThe engine evaluates elements of a position including: Material. Piece position. King safety. Pawn structure. Passed pawns. SearchThe engine uses a standard alpha-beta minimax search including: Cut offs. Move ordering. History moves, Hash tables. Extensions. Reductions. Capture search. And much more... Other books on computer chess are The Joy of Chess Programming and Think Like a Computer. My other book on programming is The Art of Programming.

IntroductionThere are a number of reasons why you may be interested in how a chess program is written: You are learning programming and interested in learning something different. You are a programmer who is interesting in developing their programming experience. You are a chess enthusiast and would like to improve your chess by learning how chess programs work. You are interested in developing a chess program and playing against it. You are interested in developing a chess program and having it play other engines. You do need to be an expert programmer to understand this book.The code is written as simply as possible.The code is designed to be simple even for intermediate and even novice programmers. If you are not a programmer, but am interested in chess, this book may be of interest. The book includes annotation of the source code for a complete chess engine the author has developed as a teaching tool.The complete source code is available at GitHub. The program can be compiled using a freely downloadable compiler.You can alter the code and see if you can make it stronger. The program is a derivative of my program referred to in my earlier book How to Write a Chess Program, which did not use bitboards. The book explains how bitboards work and some of the many ways they can be useful in programming. The bitboard version runs considerably faster and is consequently stronger. Alternatively you can simply download the exe file and run the program. The engine is strong enough to beat most social players. Features of the engine include: The ability to load positions. The ability to play in chess engine tournaments, with programs such as Arena. Its very fast. It displays the best line of play for both sides. Detects checkmate. Detects draws by repetition, 50 move rule, stalemate or reduction of material. EvaluationThe engine evaluates elements of a position including: Material. Piece position. King safety. Pawn structure. Passed pawns etc SearchThe engine uses a standard alpha-beta minimax search including: Cut offs. Move ordering. History moves, Hash tables. Extensions. Reductions. Capture search. And much more... My other books on computer chess are How to Write a Chess Program, The Joy of Chess Programming and Think Like a Computer.

This is the ultimate book for lovers of chess. The beauty, the battle, the culture, the fun, the art and the heroism of chess are the main themes of this fascinating and often surprising journey. Your private guide is Christian Hesse, a Harvard-trained professor of Mathematics and an avid chess player.

A book for all enthusiastic adult players. Michael de la Maza reveals the secrets of a unique study plan which he used to transform his level of play in just a twelve month period.

Deep Neural Networks have revolutionized computer engines for Go, Shogi and chess. Finally computers are able to evaluate a game position similiar to the way human experts do it. By that, computers are able to identify long-term strategic advantages and disadvantages. But how do chess engines based on neural networks such as AlphaZero, Leela Chess Zero actually work? This book gives an answer to that question. With lots of practical examples and illustrations, all basic building blocks that are required to understand modern chess are introduced. Based on that, the concepts of both classic and modern chess engines are explained. Finally, a miniature version of AlphaZero to play the game Hexapawn is implemented in Python. Chapters include: Single-Layer and Multilayer Perceptrons, Back-Propagation and Gradient Descent, Classification and Regression, Network Vectorization, Convolutional Layers, Squeeze and Excitation Networks, Fully Connected Layers, Batch Normalization, Rectified Linear Unit (ReLU), Residual Layers, Minimax, Alpha-Beta Search, Monte-Carlo Tree Search, AlphaGo, AlphaGo Zero, AlphaZero, Leela Chess Zero (Lc0), Fat Fritz, Effectively Updateable Neural Networks, Fat Fritz 2, Maia, Supervised Learning Hexapawn, Reinforcement Learning of Hexapawn (Hexapawn Zero)