I decided it’s time to make my long-time dream come true and code a chess playing program of my own, from scratch. Jamca (Just Another Modest Chess Agent) will hopefully be the result of this effort.

Though there are many chess-programming tutorials around the net, I feel that something is still missing. The tutorials are divided to two camps – those presenting various options in chess coding but no real code, and those with only the source code of programs, from which, in my humble opinion, it’s difficult to learn. This tutorial will attempt to bring in the best of both worlds - merging a descriptive tutorial with a code base that follows it.

This project will be released in stages. Each time I finish a part, I’ll release the newest code and a PDF document that describes it.

Here are the parts released so far:

1. Introduction (05.02.2004)
2. Representation (08.02.2004)
3. Game state and FEN notation (12.02.2004)
4. Move generation (05.03.2004)
5. A functional chess program (05.05.2004)

If you’re interested in updates on new releases of Jamca, just drop me an email.