Glossary

Alpha-Beta

A search algorithm that prunes branches that cannot affect the final result.

Bitboard

A 64-bit integer representing piece positions on the board, where each bit corresponds to a square.

Centipawn

One hundredth of a pawn; standard unit for evaluation scores.

FEN

Forsyth-Edwards Notation; a standard for describing chess positions in a single line of text.

Magic Bitboard

A technique using multiplication and lookup tables for O(1) sliding piece attack generation.

MVV-LVA

Most Valuable Victim - Least Valuable Attacker; a move ordering heuristic for captures.

Negamax

A variant of minimax that exploits the zero-sum property of chess.

Perft

Performance test; counts all leaf nodes at a given depth to validate move generation.

Ply

A half-move; one move by either white or black.

Quiescence Search

Extended search of capture sequences to avoid horizon effects.

UCI

Universal Chess Interface; standard protocol for chess engine communication.

Zobrist Hashing

A technique for hashing chess positions using XOR of random numbers.

Skill Level

A configurable difficulty setting (0–2) that limits search depth and injects random noise into move selection to simulate human-like play.

Move Noise

A random centipawn perturbation applied to root-move scores at lower skill levels, causing the engine to occasionally prefer a suboptimal move.