How Darkthought Plays Chess

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Heinz, E.A.^{; *}

Affiliations: Karlsruhe, F. R. Germany

Note: [*] Institute for Program Structures and Data Organization (IPD), University of Karlsruhe, PO Box 6980, D-76128 Karlsruhe, F. R. Germany. E-mail: heinze@ira.uka.de.

Abstract: DARKTHOUGHT is a bitboard-based chess program developed at the University of Karlsruhe. It has successfully participated in all World Championships since 1995. On a 500MHz DEC Alpha-21164a with 128MB RAM, DARKTHOUGHT routinely reaches speeds of 200K nps (nodes per second). In the middlegame while peaking at over 650K nps in the endgame. This note describes the design and inner structure of DARKTHOUGHT. To this end, it presents detailed accounts of the chess engine while elaborating on three of its innovations rotated bitboards, versatile search parameterization, and a fully progammable leaf-node evaluation function.

DOI: 10.3233/ICG-1997-20304

Journal: ICGA Journal, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 166-176, 1997