Zugblitz

Zugblitz is a UCI-compatible chess engine written in C (because it's simple enough to fit in my brain).

Why?

I started this project after watching Rey Enigma’s video about the match between Deep Blue and Garry Kasparov. Even though I barely understood what was happening due to my limited chess knowledge at the time, I became curious about how modern chess engines like Stockfish work, and how it’s possible to build something that can outperform a human at such an intellectually demanding game.

Along the way I learned a lot, and after countless hours debugging perft, I can confidently say that I no longer miss en passant captures.

Building

Requirements:

• Make
• C11-compatible compiler (clang is hardcoded in the makefile)

make CC=gcc MODE=release

This will build a release-optimized binary for your specific platform.

Warning

debug mode doesn't work with MinGW due to sanitizers.

Features

• Full move generation: en passant, castling, promotions
• Search algorithms: Alpha-Beta, PVS, quiescence search, null-move pruning
• Move ordering heuristics: killer moves, history heuristics
• Evaluation: incremental midgame/endgame evaluation with PSQTs tuned via Texel’s method
• Optimizations: transposition tables, Zobrist hashing, LTO for release builds

Development

This project uses Git Cliff for changelog generation and follows Conventional Commits.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.