Author: William H Rogers
Date: 13:41:53 01/23/06
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Hi Joshua The piece/square tables can do alot to improve a chess engines paying ability. What they do is try to find the best position for a chess man. For example, a knight has more mobility and is more powerful when placed towards the center of the board versus on an outside square. Another example is that you don't want you king place in the center of the board until the very end of the game thus you give negative point to keep it from moving there in the begining and during the mid game. These are not to lessen a chess pieces value but to help provide a better positional placement. I have examined dozens of chess engines and most all of them use these types of tables, others use another system to give almost the same results. Remember most chess programs do not know about control of the center squares unless it is programmed into them and piece/square tables is the most popular way of doing it. In programming I would suggest just as other have make a move generator and don't worry about the eval to much as it is a thing that you will be modifying over the years anyway. I found a simplified way to help in designing programs and that is to use plain english (of language of choice) and do it in an outline form just like you were writing an index for a book with several chapters. Define each item that you would like to include and break it down into smaller and smaller steps until you can't anymore. Once that is done it then becomes much easier to translate that into code for the chess engine. There are lots of references on the web so good luck with you project. Bill
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