Morlock is a hobbyist chess engine in Go. It supports a few standard techniques and protocols and is currently mainly used to re-implement the following historical chess engines:
Turochamp is an implementation of Turing's original "paper" chess engine. Turochamp uses a full search with an unbounded quiescence search of "considerable moves" using material ratio and position play heuristics:
- turochamp-1ply. Rating ~1300 (blitz/rapid).
- turochamp-2ply. Rating ~1400 (blitz/rapid).
Bernstein is a re-implementation of the first complete chess engine: Bernstein's chess program on the IBM 704. Bernstein uses a selective search limited to 7 "plausible moves" for computational feasibility:
- bernstein-2ply. Rating ~1200 (blitz/rapid).
- bernstein-4ply. Rating ~1400 (blitz/rapid).
Sargon is a re-implementation of Spracklens' early commercial chess engine. Sargon uses a full search with material exchange, king/queen pins and board control heuristics:
- sargon-1ply. Rating ~1300 (blitz/rapid).
- sargon-2ply. Rating ~1400 (blitz/rapid).
- sargon-3ply. Rating ~1500 (blitz/rapid).
- sargon-4ply. Rating ~1600 (blitz/rapid).
Each engine can be played 24/7 for free on lichess.org. They have quirks, blind spots and limitations, which is part of their charm -- and play at low search depths to entertain rather than win.
December 2023