This library implements the basic chess primitives in Golang, allowing you to create various chess-related applications.
- Rules of chess, move validation, move generation, etc.
- FEN support
- Moves in UCI and SAN format
- Running UCI engines
- Time control
- PGN (but see
chess.(*Game).Styledif you want to export the game to PGN) - UCI
"copyprotection","registration"and"register"commands - WinBoard/XBoard engines
- Support for opening book formats
- Endgame tablebases
- Chess960 and other chess variants
The main design goal is to make the APIs simple to use and hard to misuse. Also, some care is taken about performance.
Also, the project tends to be dependency-free, though, it uses testify for testing.
The implementation borrows heavily from my chess implementations in other programming languages, like SoFCheck in C++ and owlchess in Rust.
See the examples and the documentation.
Pull requests are welcome ;) There is no formal process on how to submit pull requests, it may be established once there are many enough of them.
Also, reporting issues is appreciated.
Benchmarks taken on my AMD Ryzen 7 5700U CPU.
BenchmarkGenMoves/initial 9135909 132.2 ns/op
BenchmarkGenMoves/sicilian 5885708 204.1 ns/op
BenchmarkGenMoves/middle 5832038 204.9 ns/op
BenchmarkGenMoves/openPosition 8305612 144.5 ns/op
BenchmarkGenMoves/queen 7848086 152.8 ns/op
BenchmarkGenMoves/pawnMove 12137179 97.91 ns/op
BenchmarkGenMoves/pawnAttack 12487778 96.04 ns/op
BenchmarkGenMoves/pawnPromote 7141045 167.8 ns/op
BenchmarkGenMoves/cydonia 6376789 188.1 ns/op
BenchmarkGenMoves/max 1353169 888.0 ns/op
BenchmarkGenMovesLegal/initial 3354638 358.9 ns/op
BenchmarkGenMovesLegal/sicilian 1920674 629.8 ns/op
BenchmarkGenMovesLegal/middle 1856020 662.3 ns/op
BenchmarkGenMovesLegal/openPosition 2683543 451.5 ns/op
BenchmarkGenMovesLegal/queen 2545749 470.2 ns/op
BenchmarkGenMovesLegal/pawnMove 4211289 283.7 ns/op
BenchmarkGenMovesLegal/pawnAttack 4142245 304.2 ns/op
BenchmarkGenMovesLegal/pawnPromote 2157934 555.5 ns/op
BenchmarkGenMovesLegal/cydonia 1969893 610.5 ns/op
BenchmarkGenMovesLegal/max 400219 2996 ns/op
BenchmarkMakeMove/initial 1693815 708.1 ns/op
BenchmarkMakeMove/sicilian 843788 1423 ns/op
BenchmarkMakeMove/middle 799842 1495 ns/op
BenchmarkMakeMove/openPosition 1000000 1004 ns/op
BenchmarkMakeMove/queen 1000000 1094 ns/op
BenchmarkMakeMove/pawnMove 1864294 643.6 ns/op
BenchmarkMakeMove/pawnAttack 1779667 674.3 ns/op
BenchmarkMakeMove/pawnPromote 844542 1414 ns/op
BenchmarkMakeMove/cydonia 853094 1408 ns/op
BenchmarkMakeMove/max 161667 7407 ns/op
BenchmarkMakeMoveChecked/initial 1264999 946.8 ns/op
BenchmarkMakeMoveChecked/sicilian 603042 1977 ns/op
BenchmarkMakeMoveChecked/middle 574980 2076 ns/op
BenchmarkMakeMoveChecked/openPosition 904882 1317 ns/op
BenchmarkMakeMoveChecked/queen 805620 1485 ns/op
BenchmarkMakeMoveChecked/pawnMove 1396708 861.9 ns/op
BenchmarkMakeMoveChecked/pawnAttack 1337276 898.9 ns/op
BenchmarkMakeMoveChecked/pawnPromote 640267 1866 ns/op
BenchmarkMakeMoveChecked/cydonia 621738 1919 ns/op
BenchmarkMakeMoveChecked/max 113653 10555 ns/op
BenchmarkKingAttack/initial 135330769 8.797 ns/op
BenchmarkKingAttack/sicilian 136473920 8.788 ns/op
BenchmarkKingAttack/middle 136460737 8.794 ns/op
BenchmarkKingAttack/openPosition 136149042 8.794 ns/op
BenchmarkKingAttack/queen 136318644 8.794 ns/op
BenchmarkKingAttack/pawnMove 136359507 8.831 ns/op
BenchmarkKingAttack/pawnAttack 136371324 8.801 ns/op
BenchmarkKingAttack/pawnPromote 136274674 8.814 ns/op
BenchmarkKingAttack/cydonia 136332756 9.053 ns/op
BenchmarkKingAttack/max 136371939 8.848 ns/op
The performance is ~3 times slower than owlchess in Rust, though note that Go compiler applies less optimizations and generates slower code overall.
If you plan to implement a chess engine in Go, I advice you against of doing so. Better use more performant languages such as Rust, C++ or Zig.
The code is distributed under the terms of MIT License.