Proxima b 2.0

This is the second generation of Proxima b chess engine written in C#. The engine is divided into several projects:

• Proxima.Core - the heart and soul of engine, contains all algorithms.
• GUI.App - development GUI written in Monogame. Type 'help' in console to see all available commands.
• GUI.ContentDefinitions - some content classes required by Monogame (Content Pipeline Tool).
• FICS.App - Free Internet Chess Server client.
• CECP.App - Chess Engine Communication Protocol client.
• OpeningBooksGenerator.App - nothing more than in name, converts input file with text notation (e4, Rxg4) to more readable form for the chess engine (e2e4, a7a8).
• MagicKeysGenerator.App - generates magic keys and saves them to the output file (which is faster than doing this every time when the chess engine is starting).
• Helpers.Logger - contains loggers used in the other projects.
• Helpers.ColorfulConsole - the library that supports console with colorful content (eg. "$gHello $rWorld" is displayed as (Green)Hello and (Red)World).

Strength (based on FICS ranks):

• Estimated ELO for blitz games: ~2000
• Estimated ELO for standard games: ~2100

Chess engine is online as proximab(C) on FICS (currently running on Intel Core i5-5200U 2.20GHz 8GB Windows 10, 1 core). Feel free to play with him.

Statistics:

• Source lines of code: ~10000
• Comments: ~5000
• XML: ~350

Used algorithms:

Board representation:

• Bitboards
• Zobrist hash

Move generation:

• Pre-initialized move arrays for king and knight
• Magic bitboards for slide pieces

AI:

• Negamax (based on a copy-make method)
• Alpha-Beta
• Quiescence Search
• Transposition table
• Iterative deepening
• Negascout
• History heuristic
• Killer heuristic
• Lazy SMP
• Patterns detection
• Opening book

Evaluation:

• Score includes: material, castling, king safety, mobility, pawn structure (chain, isolated and doubled pawns), position
• Static Exchange Evaluation