🚀 go-pugleaf

Since I have been unable to get gnuchess to run on my feeble old 8088
machine, I have decided to write my own chess program.  Okay, it's not
exactly for that reason; I thought it would be an interesting thing to
try.  I am not a programmer; just a hobbyist who has taught himself
Turbo Pascal.

I was right.  It is very interesting.  I soon discovered that the
apparently trivial procedure of creating a list of legal moves from a
given position is not so trivial, when one considers the possibility of
pinned pieces and discovered checks.  However, I have solved that
problem and can generate lists of legal moves from a given position.

What I am having trouble with is conceptualizing the routine for finding
a good move at a given ply depth.  The minimax thing, while conceptually
easy to understand, is elusive as an algorithm.  Also, I note that other
programs seem to *finish* searching at a given depth before starting to
examine the next ply, whereas to me the most comprehensible approach is
to use nested loops to search depth-first.

I think I need some hints.  I presume that all of these matters are well
hashed out in print somewhere.  Can anyone recommend a
not-too-forbidding book on the subject?

Thanks.

-- 
Todd Moody * tmoody@sju.edu  (That's St. Joseph's Univ., Philosophy Dept.)
            "In what furnace was thy brain?"  -- William Blake