Coding Adventure: Chess

My attempt at creating a little chess playing program!
Think you can beat it? Give it a go over here: sebastian.itch.io/chess-ai
Watch the sequel here: • Coding Adventure: Maki...
If you'd like to support the creation of more videos (and get early access to new content), I'd greatly appreciate the support here: / sebastianlague
Project Source:
github.com/SebLague/Chess-Cod...
Learning Resources:
www.chessprogramming.org/Main...
web.archive.org/web/200710260...
github.com/MartinMSPedersen/C...
Chapters:
00:00 The Board and Pieces
03:20 Generating Moves
06:54 A Random Adversary
07:52 Optimization and Testing
12:11 Search and Evaluation
17:43 Easy Endgames
20:00 The Transposition Table
23:03 Openings
25:09 Game One
26:06 Game Two
27:01 Game Three
28:05 Game Four
Music:
Devoted Mind by Wild Colors
Intuition by Lincoln Davis
Wonderland by Shimmer
Selfless by Eleven Tales
Floating Point by Roie Shpigler
Nobility by Wicked Cinema
A Quiet Place by Jordan White
Air by Assaf Ayalon
Heart Wide Open by Sounds Like Sander
Thoughts by Anbr
Deep Blue Sea by Sivan Talmor
Flight of the Inner Bird by Sivan Talmor
Kings and Queens by Wicked Cinema

[@SebastianLague]

Hey everyone, hope you enjoy the video! Quick note - I noticed some slightly distracting compression issues after uploading, where squares of the chess board would sometimes blur together and flicker a bit. The only solution I could find was upscaling to 4k, so if you have the bandwidth I'd recommend watching in 1440 or 2160p. By the way if you'd like to play against the AI, you can find downloads here: sebastian.itch.io/chess-ai And source code for the project is over here: github.com/SebLague/Chess-AI

[@swordsmanbaby9520]

Thank you

[@savawhatever3092]

damn you upscaled a video to 4k just so we could see the chess board better

[@SmoothOperator739]

Nice more C O N T E N T.

[@ananttiwari1337]

Awesome!

[@reecegarthwaite4905]

Are you going to make more videos on the procedural moons and planets? It was my favourite series

[@jacobbradshaw995]

The sad thing about playing against your own creation is that you feel depressed whether you win or lose.

[@thedude4039]

No, I would be very happy to lose.

[@Phosdoq]

@@thedude4039 XDD

[@EatYourVegs]

Imagine how Gary Kasparov feels.

[@brockmann4815]

@Eric Lee then the ai needs to get better xD

[@hapainess3636]

@@brockmann4815 or u are stronk as magnus carlsen

[@shriram5494]

7:00 "Plays moves completely at random", Whips out Sicilian Defence

[@burakalp34]

Computer knows something

[@louisrobitaille5810]

Tbf, a LOT of "set of moves" in chess that have names, so you're bound to land on something, no matter what you do 🤷‍♂️.

[@shriram5494]

@@louisrobitaille5810 but the Sicilian is particularly potent. It might possibly be the best response from black to e4.

[@atg5021]

@@louisrobitaille5810 yea, basically the two main responses to 1. e4 are e5 and the Sicilian. Although the Caro Kann and French exist, at supercomputer level, they are somewhat disputed. Thus, c5 or e5 are likely to be the best responses.

[@masteryooda9087]

Some weird closed Sicilian variation

[@Pablo360able]

"Let's pit the computer against itself." *computer draws* Ah, I see it's already reached grandmaster level.

[@delusionalfusional8409]

World champion level*

[@TheUncutAngel]

🤣🤣🤣

[@CosplayZine]

Good form Pablo

[@LucasGleason]

lol

[@slevinchannel7589]

@@CosplayZine No one ever coded a HunterxHunter-Game or even Mod. Tht makes me sad.

[@zarblitz]

I love that castling bug. It's such a great example of computers doing exactly what you tell them to, for better or for worse.

[@bettercalldelta]

Computers often do what you tell them to do, but not what you want them to do.

[@512TheWolf512]

No, more like it's highlighting your own inadequacy in logical thinking

[@bettercalldelta]

@@512TheWolf512 did you ever try programming, snowflake

[@zarblitz]

@@512TheWolf512 Here's your trophy for never making a mistake.

[@bitflipped5337]

@@zarblitz eyy why the aggression?

[@leumasme]

Maybe the real treasure was the bugs we made along the way.

[@PantheraLeo04]

If that's true then my code is Montecristo

[@ghostriley22]

I feel the bugs teach us more than most of the other aspects of programming

[@sethsrc792]

@@ghostriley22 programming is all about solving problems, so bugs are really important

[@divat10]

@@sethsrc792 yes but everybody hates them

[@thatoneguy9582]

-Bugsnax, probably

[@zeNUKEify]

“This program plays random moves” Program: *Sicilian defense 2.Nc6*

[@laytonjr6601]

And it hang mate so proof that the Sicilian defense is bad

[@urmomisgaylmaoo3114]

@@laytonjr6601 somebody did too

[@gustavopineda9681]

@@laytonjr6601 sicilian is the best kid

[@yigit-nh2vn]

@@gustavopineda9681 it's joke,stop calling randoms kid idiot

[@gustavopineda9681]

@@yigit-nh2vn wow so toxic 3 years old

[@stevemurch3245]

Amazing job (1) programming, (2) explaining the programming, and (3) still finding the time to make the horse whistle in your video

[@GopherAtl]

I now firmly believe that if a piece captures your rook at a time when you otherwise could have castled, you should be able to respond by castling with the capturing piece. Assuming it's a bishop or knight, of course, anything else that would be checkmate. I have no idea what impact this rule change would have on the game but I want to find out!

[@matiasgarciacasas558]

It would only affect the game in very specific cases. If your oponent captures your rook, they probably broke through your defense, and it wouldn't be a good idea to castle on that side of the board.

[@fishraposo7192]

@@matiasgarciacasas558 do it for science

[@enoua5222]

I accidentally had a bug like this on a chess game I made-- it checked that you had not moved the rook, but didn't check if that rook was still on the board. I found out about it when the AI used it to get out of a lost position

[@enoua5222]

Okay, I just got to that part of the video, lol, guess I had the exact same bug

[@BlueZirnitra]

@@matiasgarciacasas558 This. If your opponent is taking your rook on its home square, you're probably losing big time.

[@solarsystem5286]

When he makes a bot that plays randomly, but then it plays the Sicilian Defense 😐

[@amaice]

HA C5 IS FOR FOOLS

[@oranellis]

I thought he was trolling when it went c5 Nc6

[@rafexrafexowski4754]

Wait, he coded you a few monthes ago...

[@ceddyd]

@@rafexrafexowski4754 ha nice.

[@IbraHere]

Yeah i was a bit suspicious at first

[@sevret313]

Being able to castle with an opponents piece after it takes a rook is definitely something that should be become an official variant.

[@MrJacqques]

Yea, when he showed that I couldn't help but think: Neat, I want that.

[@neryanatanov385]

That was the funniest thing I've seen in my life

[@djjimmaster8261]

I thoight so too haha

[@Salman-os7pr]

Definetely!

[@carlocruz5345]

We can only hope that they will implement that on the next patch.

[@MicroDemi]

I love the content presentation you came up with. I'm abysmal at coding, but I still found this super fascinating.

[@swiftfated]

I love how the iterative search being faster is so counterintuitive, but ends up making sense when you hear the explanation

[@skatatataatje]

This face reveal surprised me. Who knew a cat could code?

[@juliendev2191]

Im not a cat

[@matheuscirillo36]

@@juliendev2191 Im here live

[@conordunne3831]

He's also a lawyer on the side.

[@badgoogle9938]

Even worst, the cat gave up. I thought it was still a winning postition

[@Diaryofaninja]

It’s not a cat...you could see his face...

[@PiastTorun]

An AI that plays random moves starts with a classical Sicilian, I think this AI has a future.

[@laytonjr6601]

The first thing to learn is to not hang mate in 1

[@FauziGMNG21]

Nope, still chess yet.

[@anguskurts8244]

I thought that was the old Sicilian

[@Shiver197]

**immediately follows it with h5**

[@theefmi4810]

This video was the reason why I picked up chess 8 months ago. Thank you for making this video and giving me an awesome new hobby which I am still entirely obsessed over. :)

[@alphac0d3r3d3]

This is a really well constructed video. I love the in depth yet simple nature of explaining the code while writing it. I’m learning C++ myself.

[@jackthehacker05]

Hey, it's coding man with the nice accent.

[@Eichro]

guy sounds like male Tibees

[@thatperson9478]

Yeahhh!

[@mircoheitmann]

and the nice cat too

[@daorklis5305]

Not with thicc Indian accent huh?

[@nio4260]

@@daorklis5305 how is that an Indian accent

[@Azurade]

“This bot plays moves at random” *plays first 2 moves of the mainline Sicilian defence, the most popular defence among gms*

[@laytonjr6601]

Then, it hangs mate in 1 so by average, it's a good bot

[@sonetagu1337]

What that means is, Sicilian = random bullshit go!

[@coolperson8423]

I have been struggling to get a well structured solution for a virtual chess board, and you make it look so easy, thanks for the great vid!

[@Hankathan]

I absolutely love the iterative deepening idea! I was equally confused and angry at first, but when you brought up alpha beta pruning again, a little light bulb went off in my brain. These counterintuitive solutions and aha moments are some of my favorite things!

[@juanibiapina]

Completely random adversary goes ahead and plays a Sicilian.

[@MrGogoblaster]

Lol I thought that was funny

[@shadower2763]

Time stamp pls?

[@makytondr8607]

Exactly 😂

[@j.thomas1420]

I was searching for that comment...!

[@Ivan_1791]

True, I was like wtf.

[@pesterenan]

Because of the colors in the thumbnail I thought this would be a Code Bullet's video.

[@AhabHyde]

Me too 😂

[@itisrandomidk903]

Wat? Pesterenan here???????

[@jovianarsenic6893]

Tbf he did a chess video a while ago

[@christianschweda2530]

Jup, same here. 😅

[@zombieaerospace5005]

me too

[@marcoVGpolo]

I really appreciate the official FIDE stream intermission/commentary music being played at 16:00. Nice touch.

[@DavidBarile]

Thank you for such a fascinating journey - interesting, funny, well-edited, clearly stated. I'm a mid-level coder myself (Unity C#), and tho I can't follow some of your deeper level coding, I got the gist, and enjoyed the theoretical path you sketched out for us. You can rest proud of creating not only a great AI, but also a high quality video for the world. Thank you!

[@georgesheng5500]

"I'll go ahead and fix that quickly" "I'm rapidly losing faith in my ability to code anything" Story of any programmers life while debugging

[@pedroduran8927]

truth, that's my mind sometimes in work

[@oliveryt7168]

"I'll debug it quickly" ... 3 hours later... "... it works."

[@therobloxiangang3218]

@@oliveryt7168 except there are 60 more bugs

[@Mike-we3rb]

Let zuckerburg read this and he’ll show you his 180billion

[@SumiEwiets-idgaf]

I am also a fellow Junior Dev programmer can confirm

[@windingsarcasm9046]

Lets start with a computer who plays completely randomly Computer: *busts out with the Sicilian defence*

[@Love.Masculinity]

hey, 29:06 I HAVE made it till the end, and let me tell you that The video, the jokes you throw in, the creativity you've put into this is all amazing... It really takes so much of time to firstly code such a game where they are endless possibilities + make it all alone + making the youtube video for it and grinding to all the information for the game, studying it... greaat work!!!! Hope your hardwork pays off!!❤

[@DAWEAP1]

This is amazing! Seriously so much work and very well explained.

[@Magnogen]

I like to play a little game called "How will Sebastian implement this coding adventure into his Solar System simulation?" So far I'm not sure about this one.

[@bogiesmigforl1]

Secret chess minigame on hidden planet.

[@jaimefernandez3444]

He could make some sort of evil empire ruled by AI that presents chess as a riddle game the main character has to win to save the galaxy.

[@el2746]

@@jaimefernandez3444 So... No game no life? Basically?

[@actuallymediocreoverclocki657]

Maybe when a planet goes to generate plants it would use a grid mesh over the surface of the planet. Then each type of plant would have a sort of value and you cant have too much value in a certain sized area, and due to environmental constraints certain plants cant spawn in certain areas. Maybe the way it goes about spawning them in would follow a similar pattern of looking ahead in time with spawning to maximize the total value of plants on the planet? This is about the best I can come up with and I'm not sure it makes much sense. . .

[@jonathanmoothart8038]

A minigame? or maybe an easter egg for viewers? Either way, I can't wait for new SSS videos (Wink Wink Sebastian)

[@enochou]

21:37 "If we want the speed, we have to live in fear". That quote is at least depth 6.

[@Freakschwimmer]

Yea, but I dont quite agree with the quote. What if we use the integer (which is basically a hash of the position) to find possible transposition candidates, and then check the candidates by using the FEN-String? We basically get the speed of the hash and the uniqueness of the FEN.

[@UnboxTheCat]

​@@Freakschwimmer I don't think checking the collision by comparing with FEN string is worthy at all, here are some of my arguments: #1 it is almost impossible to reverse the hash back to the original chess position, that's why it is called hashing. #2 even if reversing the hash is possible, converting it back to FEN string is just ridiculously expensive. You have to go through 8*8 = 64 elements and generate a new FEN string based on that. #3 Comparing these two FEN tags are also expensive, imagine running cmp instructions by up to 32 times just to check these two strings.

[@randomizednamme]

@@UnboxTheCat you don’t need to reverse it, you just store the FEN alongside your real data, like a dictionary you would have buckets instead of a single element in case of a collision

[@UnboxTheCat]

then in that case why dont u just store the FEN instead? Because in CCRL or other chess emgine competition only allows you to have a tt table size of 256/512 MB, and you will NOT have enough room if u store along the FEN. Plus in order to store the FEN, u have to generate the FEN for each position as well, which is really slow. As a result, I have never seen any engine's imeplementation like that(or even if they do, their depth won't go past 8 without aggressive pruning I promise you). Modern top engine usually just store the Zobrost hash value % transposition table size as key, and the position eval, hash move, and alpha beta flag, as you may see in stockfish's source code. Chess engine requires good performance in terms of speed, not good looking fancy code that uses std hashmap. Correct me If I am wrong

[@sebaaa15]

damn. the minute you 'tagged' is the time that pope John Paul 2 died (sorry for bad english)

[@maximilianmorse9697]

5:54 Holy hell

[@Padyatra]

I’m not a programmer, nor am I much of a chess fan, but I was amazed how you managed to make this seemingly boring topics quite interesting. Well done.

[@Odisher7]

2:44 +pick a pice and put it somewhere -Okay, i pick a piece and put a copy of it somewhere +No, you have to delete the piece -Oh, okay, delete the piece, gotcha +No, not like that

[@OrangeC7]

Don't you love how obedient computers are

[@Ethan-lx1vv]

@@OrangeC7 Computers are just smartasses that purposely do exactly what you say and not what you want them to do just to annoy you.

[@leemarshal3329]

@@Ethan-lx1vv haha lol yeah - like the kid that you tell to 'zip it' and they proceed to redo up their flies.

[@PsychoPath89]

11:00, i LOVE those moments in coding when you think you prevented every imaginable edge case and not by creativity but sheer rule following, the program manages to find another edge case that you are baffled by its existence...

[@mads_in_zero]

Bot: I did exactly what you told me to, papa! Programmer: [trying not to sound annoyed] I know you did, sport.

[@raheemkhan2007]

so true

[@randompotato8105]

then u smash ur head into a wall "dangit he got me again"

[@Seven-ez5ux]

love? more like hate

[@JonahNelson7]

@@Seven-ez5ux this is what separates true programmers from posers

[@efulmer8675]

19:00 The fact that the AI was smart enough to solve the King and Queen vs King and Pawn on a winning square for the King and Queen made me very happy. But a better test would be to give it the Bishop pawn and allow the AI to decide to stalemate or resign and see if it does either in that position.

[@user-dh8oi2mk4f]

It’s never going to resign. It can always just take the pawn and get a fraw

[@efulmer8675]

@@user-dh8oi2mk4f A properly written one wont, but thats why you run tests in the first place: if it does resign in a position where it can force a draw then theres a bug in the code.

[@user-dh8oi2mk4f]

@@efulmer8675 engines don’t resign

[@user-dh8oi2mk4f]

Not unless you specifically program a resign system in

[@efulmer8675]

@@user-dh8oi2mk4f I know that. Engines don't write themselves yet.

[@markusoestreich8695]

Very very interesting from so many aspects. Thank you for posting this video. Awesome!

[@Wurstschaedel]

*Builds a universe with simulated gravity, procedural Planetary Features and light refracting effects* *struggles with drag and drop*

[@Pinao212]

Too accurate, drag and drop is a nightmare. Especially in UI space where hierarchy order determines draw depth

[@cinegraphics]

When God coded our solar system, he also had problems with drag'n'drop. Which even resulted in loss of a planet. Why else do you think we now have an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, instead of Phaeton.

[@sir_slimestone3797]

Sounds about right

[@teenspirit1]

you need state machines for the latter. Only nerds know state machines.

[@Phosdoq]

@@cinegraphics If he wanted to hide his bugs, we wouldn't enjoy the video and it would be like a perfect coding which is unnatural like an Indian tutorial or something. We humans struggle in the slightest things no matter what skills we acquired so far.

[@justgame5508]

It’s nice to see your failures too, sometimes when I make stupid mistakes on what seems like an easy task I wonder “do others make these mistakes or am I just dumb”😂

[@kaksspl]

Yes. For this reason I love videos that not only show projects but also the adventure behind them with all the ups and downs. It reminds me that pros are still people who still make mistakes. When I inevitably compare myself to them it's not just "they are so much better than me" but more like "be patient like them and dig into it until you succeed like them".

[@Henrix1998]

You also don't see all the coding mistakes here, it's typing out the final good code most of the time

[@kaksspl]

@@Henrix1998 My guess is that's so when somebody follows the video to recreate the project and learn from it, they don't copy the bad code.

[@danisob3633]

both

[@cinegraphics]

We're all dumb

[@ramonperezgalera3842]

This video is absolutely brilliant mate. You inspire me to improve my code and to accept this kind of challenges Just amazing, loving to see more content of this quality in your channel ❤️

[@yato3335]

I like how you calmly explain the bugs that probably took you hours and hours to find

[@ScibbieGames]

1 Year of complete silence later: "Coding Adventure: Go AI"

[@nitroflap]

The same idea.

[@stuffofmaking]

@@nitroflap Go would need to use a widely different stratagy for AI as it's not even remotely viable to do an brute force search as in chess. The game tree is unreasonable amounts larger. More novel ideas needs to be introduced.

[@nitroflap]

@@stuffofmaking I know that, I'm a go player.

[@the.invincible.9542]

​@@nitroflap Until recently, it was thought to be impossible for AIs to beat human professionals at Go. But Machine Learning algorithms make it easier. This, however, isn't Machine Learning but simply bruteforcing. So it is not the same idea.

[@nitroflap]

@@the.invincible.9542 Well yeah, but we, in theory can create a really good Go AI, without ML.

[@ShrubRustle]

Years ago, on Scratch, the big trend was chess projects. There were a lot of really good ones, that constrained both sides to legal moves. There was one thing nobody had managed, though - an AI opponent. This was a whole thing, Scratchers talking about if it was even possible, etc. Then, a user named Midecah showed up. No previous projects, no avatar, nothing. Midecah uploads the best chess project anyone had ever seen on Scratch. It had a detailed description, pseudo-3d chess pieces... and an AI opponent. Hell, it even had a _loading bar._ It was a bit buggy, but the scope of the project made that a bit of an inevitability. Midecah hasn't uploaded anything since, nor have they responded to comments or anything. They just... showed up at the perfect time, gave us the holy grail of the current trend, and rode off into the sunset. Godspeed, Midecah, Godspeed.

[@farrankhawaja9856]

Wow, what a story! At first I was thinking that making a really good chess game is easy but then I heard of the Loading Bar...

[@harleykf1]

Should probably post the scratch AI I made. It's probably like 800 elo but it's still a fun opponent

[@KenHilton]

For context, "Years ago" is MANY years ago. Midecah made their AI in 2009. It's also broken as of Scratch 3.0, but you can still play it in Forkphorus: forkphorus.github.io/#569176

[@cabbler]

That's amazing. Scratch has such an impressive development community hidden under the childish surface, kinda like roblox.

[@Merthalophor]

@@cabbler they definitely are children though "under the surface"

[@pabandasvlog]

Kudos for the great effort. Things are getting more complex step by step.

[@joeldick6871]

Most amazing thing to me was how the AI suddenly became really good at simple endgames as soon as you added that endgame tweak.

[@bossyman7806]

Can we just talk about how he’s really good in chess. For being a developer and seeing him actually beating the bot and making really nice moves, I’m impressed a lot lol

[@gustavopineda9681]

he's not good he made many mistakes

[@sussybaka6076]

@@gustavopineda9681 he's pretty decent he was playing quite well

[@seharpanesar5132]

26:53 that bishop sacrifice was pretty sweet tbh. It won him the game

[@sussybaka6076]

@Adam Taylor I mean compared to other non-chess content creators I'd say he's pretty ok

[@sanjivinsmoke9154]

@Adam Taylor see you're comparing him to high stat players. For the normal population 1200 elo is quite decent

[@bennywang5752]

I swear, a few weeks ago I wrote a pretty basic chess program... fast forward to now, you talked about this castling with opponents pieces glitch you had... a small voice went off in my head, saying "ha, rookie mistake! wait... this glitch isn't on your game of chess, right... ". Sure enough, after testing my game of chess again, I had the exact same glitch.

[@Krugster]

A year later. Last month I made my chess program that has the same problem lmao

[@BRich057]

I love this video and really all your videos. Your voice is calming. Your programming with explanations is teaching and inspiring. Plus your world creation Celestial to say the least. You fit your name. In the never ending story. That is what you remind me of. And I mean that with every compliment and utmost of respect. Please do more.

[@skyeadamson8257]

That binary encoding of pieces has just solved an issue I was stuck on for months with my masters project. THANK YOU!

[@friiiz4907]

The fact that I watched this whole video while knowing not a single thing about chess just shows how much I love your videos

[@SebastianLague]

:)

[@appleyt6757]

Yeah me too

[@Bebs_]

Can’t agree more

[@arnonuhmer3771]

+1

[@Nerdwithoutglass]

The fact that I watched this whole video while knowing not a single thing about coding just shows how much I love chess (Honestly, I didn't watch the whole video and I didn't search for this)

[@jasmijnisme]

5:41 Cat decides to forfeit the game as the first move, interesting choice.

[@hye181]

i heard magnus studied him closely

[@abdulazizali5259]

Everything on this channel is perfect. I learned a lot from you, thanks a lot.

[@annasablon3068]

i really dont understand anything form this video but I love doing stuff with you rambeling in the background, I find your voice very soothing. sometimes I come to check what you are actually saying and there are some gem moments in these videos!! keep up the good work :D))

[@user-rf2dr4gd9s]

3:11 Sebastian is now officaly the best chess player in world.

[@bennettw8666]

"Completely at random" "Opens with the sicillian"

[@vevericac3294]

you are so underrated. you make great content and your games are of good quality and you dont make people subscribe, you just get to the point of the video. keep up the work!

[@jada90]

27:50 yes the explanation made sense and it's fascinating, I still can't believe so much optimization comes from the extra pruning

[@lillogic7358]

I am actually learning a programming language at the moment, and seeing what you can do with programming gives me so much motivation.

[@orhanmadiassani]

Keep going!

[@LucasGleason]

L

[@gachastorys5129]

@@LucasGleason why say L?

[@LucasGleason]

@@gachastorys5129 I have no idea why I said that

[@LucasGleason]

@@gachastorys5129 sooo ask my past self

[@moopsish]

"The computer thinks its doing fine until it realizes it needs to start sacking pieces to prevent a checkmate". same computer same..

[@seanfabry700]

This has been the most fascinating piece of content I have seen in a while.

[@tylerhatfield3892]

I've been coding for 3 weeks and 90% of this goes over my head, but I am trying hard! Great stuff and very interesting!

[@rezaka116]

11:08 - I honestly laughed out loud at this part

[@log234]

Me too, it took me by such surprise! When you look at it, it makes so much sense, but it's just not what you expect.

[@user-zg4bk6rv1q]

I still am 😂😂😂

[@FauziGMNG21]

Meh

[@cxlappsed1548]

you have a terrible sense of humor

[@taureon_]

HmMmMmMmMmMm

[@ThraxxMediaOfficial]

This is truly a wonderful video! So informative and well made, I actually come back to re-watch it every so often, just for the pure entertainment value. :) Aside from that... it has inspired me to try my hand at creating a chess engine of my own, in C++ and from scratch - I'm calling it "DLC-LUNA" and I'm pretty happy with the results so far. About a month's worth of work was put into the project, and I'm at a point where it can easily defeat a 1500-1600 ELO StockFish bot. Now, of course that's not really "good" by any means... more like, pretty much average. But it's more than I ever hoped to achieve in this short amount of time anyway. The last thing I'd need to add would be an opening book... and from there, it's basically just computing speed optimization. But as I said: I didn't even expect myself to get _anything_ done to begin with, so this is already a huge success :D all thanks to your inspiration. Thank you. :)

[@TDOLLA]

this is an incredibly well made video, Bravo. This is the perfect video and subject level to show someone what programming is.

[@salted3507]

Alternate title: How I created lichess

[@victorzahler6175]

Hello Sebastian Lague, I have a question: Can I use your atmosphere shader (from that solar system trilogy you made) for my game? I promise to put your name in the credits

[@SebastianLague]

For sure. Good luck with your game!

[@victorzahler6175]

@@SebastianLague Thanks : )

[@victorzahler6175]

@Anmol Pandey no worries, I will : )

[@pranitp.1622]

So where's the development process at till date? I'm very curious to play your game :)

[@victorzahler6175]

@@pranitp.1622 sorry man, gave up on it due to college

[@CobraTheSpacePirate]

Suckerpinch video from a while back was AWESOME! I saw that a while ago!

[@Beyond_The_Board]

Very impressive and clean execution, definitely will try refactoring some code in my game based on this!

[@lucasgrape8576]

Chess: has pieces of two colors Sebastian: Let's use two bits for that Great Coding Adventure! When is your Go AI coming? :)

[@jangohemmes352]

Thought the same, but I think he uses it for the extra state of no color

[@SebastianLague]

I’ll need to learn how to play Go first! :D The extra bit is just so I can have ‘no colour’ as an option. Was mildly useful in some cases to be able to represent a pure piece type, with no colour associated.

[@zarhockk]

@@SebastianLague What was the need for those no color/pure pieces? I think a lot of us were puzzled by that as well.

[@yannick7654]

@@zarhockk or it can have both colours, schrödingers piece

[@cinegraphics]

Also, it's useful if you wanna have 3-player chess. Or even 4-player. Hell, give it a whole byte so we can have last man standing.

[@absence9443]

This channel is gold. Its not only the great explanations and step by step development that someone can replicate for learning, but also including mishaps and nice accents of humor.

[@GlobalWarmingSkeptic]

Thank you for this. As someone who loves programming machine learning AI, I've always wanted to program a chess network that uses Q learning to both memorize board positions, as well as piece relationships but my weakness in code is tree searches because I've never programmed a lot of things that used searches, and in chess it's unavoidable and you have to use them. the explanation of alpha pruning really helped me and your demonstration of code definitely will make the transition easier as I can see a way it's programmed so I can modify it for my own use.

[@charimuvilla8693]

This is actually really well made. Instead of a very basic AI you went really deep and made something that's quite good.

[@maxofcourse]

3:10 the classic Lague Opening, king takes king is a master chess maneuver

[@Ninterd2]

Catastrophically misjudging almost every situation? Sounds like my chess.

[@zac9176]

I've been following along with your chess videos, and slowly implementing some of the various features myself in Java (Didn't end up staying with Java though). In between watching the video and reading your code, I'm always astonished about the little details that you change along the way. The one that stood out to me the most in this video is where you changed the number for the pieces after realizing that bit-wise operators would work easier if the sliding pieces were one higher than what you initially set them to, which is a very clever change. Anyhow, thank you for the little kick of motivation to refine some of my lackluster coding skills! I hope to get a bot that can at least beat me.

[@danilmartyniuk]

Amazing work! Great visualization and presentation. I watched it at 4:00AM and weren't regret any second!

[@miroslavblagoev5887]

when you "sneakily" took his king with yours i lost it haha

[@zyaicob]

When it took the rook and got eaten backwards by the pawn i lost my shit

[@oruntofredrick9672]

@Miroslav Blagoev The way the pawn calmly moves backwards to kill the king

[@SkylarGlider]

Same

[@LucasGleason]

wait I need time stamps for these I missed a lot of the video ;-;

[@bradleypascall9372]

The way you elongate the final syllable of some words makes you sound like an old school film villain/vampire/evil wizard (it's awesome)

[@CodeLife_12]

Very interesting video! The approach you talk about around the 28:00 mark reminds me of dynamic programming. Keep up the videos, they are really fun to watch!

[@willfeng6149]

Thanks for the video. It really help to sort out a few puzzles for me when I try to understand the design of the game engine!

[@uheartbeast]

At 2:28 Is it Nf7+, Kg8, Qe8+, Qf8, Qxf8++? Also, thanks for another great video! :)

[@matheuscirillo36]

Yes, it is. Superb work mate

[@morkovija]

Isnt Qe8 blocked by black queen then white knight to f7 easier?

[@SebastianLague]

Yes, that’s correct :) Happy you enjoyed the video!

[@matheuscirillo36]

@@morkovija you just capture the queen after that and deliver checkmate

[@uheartbeast]

@@morkovija That isn't mate cause the king can move to g8 since the black queen is no longer there.

[@comicfan3133]

I just love 11:00 it´s interesting how a small mistake in programming makes such weird moves possible.

[@zuthalsoraniz6764]

Honestly that checkmate at 7:48 is pretty nice for a random match. Checkmate by a knight, with every other friendly piece on the board contributing to keeping the king pinned. The other knight guards f6, the rook guards d4 to f4, the queen takes care of d4 to d6, and e6 and f5 are taken care of by the bishop (and the mating knight also guards f4)

[@MrRajiv256]

I remember coding my chess engine when I was a sophomore and came across several problems that you mentioned. So fun.

[@Shadow__X]

Finally... This made my day even before watching...

[@franklimburns7938]

Same

[@pomi1298]

i came before watching this

[@Shadow__X]

@@pomi1298 idk if i understand that correctly but if I do, that's disgusting

[@santoshjackman]

Programming language..?

[@pomi1298]

@@Shadow__X ???

[@alexthi]

7:49 Ah yes, a very common endgame situation.

[@calvindang7291]

The idea of using iterative deepening to control branch order for alpha-beta pruning is something I've never considered before, but that's actually a super clever trick. Now I feel like my prof should've talked about that in class.

[@MRKRRNZ]

I’ve always wanted to program a chess game but haven’t thought about it in a while. You just reignited the desire.

[@347573]

The best instructional video on chess programming ever!! Reasonably short, with all basic staff in place with proper level of detail to give the idea of what is this journey about... Bravo!

[@SebastianLague]

Thanks!

[@mzg8286]

For endgame, if there are 7 pieces or less the optimal set of moves to win has been found, basically it has been solved.

[@qwerty1233787]

Yeah but he doesn't want to use 3rd party data since that kinda defeats the point

[@skovecka]

@@qwerty1233787 but he does in the opening

[@qwerty1233787]

@@skovecka that's true. But I think it's another thing to use data accrued by a 3rd party engine.

[@tinytim8173]

@@qwerty1233787 I don’t think that’s an issue. He could decently easily get a functional table base it would just take a while for his computer to calculate it so I don’t see an issue with just copying it.

[@mastery4667]

@@tinytim8173his computer doesn't have enough depth to get a flawless tablebase

[@NicolasPare]

Great video and I do love the little sound effects throughout.

[@scriptles]

Awesome video, it was really enjoyable to watch. Nice work!

[@stephendonovan9084]

Sebastian: makes computer which makes moves at random Computer: "Sicilian defense it is" Me: *shook*

[@virus2028]

This is so insightful, I'm actually looking into completing my Honors degree in AI and I would love to build this as a project. Really good inspiration. Keep up the work.

[@djconnel]

fantastic. I've wondered about computer chess algorithms since playing (and often losing) to the Atari video cartridge. This clarifies how to break down the problem.

[@switch1e]

I wish I found your channel a year ago. It would have helped me so much in my Artificial Intelligence classes 🤣

[@Ben_747]

Great video! You should plot the ELO rating of your Chess program against each upgrade you make, e.g random moves, to basic heuristics, to the king safety and knights preferred squares etc. Might take some work but would make for a very interesting follow up video (:

[@RobertMilesAI]

This gave me flashbacks to my undergrad dissertation, writing a '3D' chess variant with time as the third dimension. Figuring out the legality of moves was really horrible code, because you could do things like moving a piece back in time to take a piece that would go on to threaten the king in the present. So figuring out if a move actually got you out of check took ages.

[@TacoDude314]

Have you played "5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel"? It's on Steam.

[@LeoStaley]

You never made that video about "chess quantizers" that you promised on Suckerpinch's video about 30 weird chess algorithms!

[@RobertMilesAI]

@@LeoStaley whoa that's a deep cut, I'd forgotten about that

[@NedoKris]

2:28 1.Nf7+ folowed by Kg8 forced move, as the black queen is pinned to the king and no other piece can take the Knight 2.Qe8+, after goes completely ceremonial Qf8, the only move, desperately blocking the check, when crushing 3.Qxf8# comes in, defended by a Knight on d7. Quite easy, yet very satisfying puzzle

[@gilly_the_fish]

Had to come down here to make sure I got that right and I wasn't missing anything. The threat of Rh6 definitely narrows the options to forced checks, but it pays to be sure.

[@srikanthkal8695]

Thank you for this video Sebastian. Appreciate it.