Computer Chess Programming

One of my main interests in leisure time is programming chess. Beside my job and my family I have written the chess program RDChess, spending many evening and weekend hours during  the last years for this hobby. RDChess is programmed with Borland Delphi and  has an own Graphical User Interface.

Get an overview of the  RDChess functionality (User Manual).

You may try RDChess yourself and download a free copy.
If you are a chess programmer, interested in how others program chess,  look into the source code download zip file.
Remark: The source code contains comments in a mixture of German and English language, so be aware you may not understand the source not knowing the German language. 

Read a Technical description of the RDChess program, describing shortly the architecture, data structures, search and evaluation routines of the program. Mostly the program follows  the "main stream" architecture of brute force programs of the Northwestern University program CHESS 4.5 type, but has a few "proprietary" program technical features.

RDChess is comparable in strength to other free/ shareware programs like "GNUCHESS for Windows" or WAXMAN.  I am not a good chess player and loose practically every time against my own program. Also RDChess looses usually against commercially sold chess programs like Fritz, Junior and others and is weaker than programs like Crafty or Dark Thought, which have been developed in an academic surrounding by people who have not to steal their evening hours for programming chess.
Since shortly RDChess (version V2.98 and greater) has a WinBoard interface and can play against other Winboard compatible chess engines. Read further about the strength of the program and how to test it. Download test suites, specifically annotated for automatic testing. 

   Back to Home page

Last modified 2002-08-21   Rudolf Posch