https://github.com/gautam8404/kelp
A Chess Engine written in Rust.
https://github.com/gautam8404/kelp
chess chess-engine game rust
Last synced: 4 months ago
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A Chess Engine written in Rust.
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/gautam8404/kelp
- Owner: gautam8404
- License: gpl-3.0
- Created: 2023-08-05T20:51:47.000Z (almost 3 years ago)
- Default Branch: main
- Last Pushed: 2025-10-08T13:31:16.000Z (7 months ago)
- Last Synced: 2025-10-08T14:43:27.483Z (7 months ago)
- Topics: chess, chess-engine, game, rust
- Language: Rust
- Homepage:
- Size: 339 KB
- Stars: 22
- Watchers: 3
- Forks: 1
- Open Issues: 2
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- License: LICENSE
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README
# Kelp
Kelp is a UCI compatible chess engine written in Rust Using standard chess algorithms.
Kelp is work in progress. Currently, it can be used as a UCI engine But evaluation needs a lot of work to be done especially the endgame evaluation.
## Play Against It
Lichess:- https://lichess.org/@/KelpBot
Kelp is UCI compatible it should work with any UCI compatible gui, so far kelp has been tested on [Pychess](https://github.com/pychess/pychess), [BanskaiGUI](https://banksiagui.com/), [Arena](http://www.playwitharena.de/) and [cutechess](https://cutechess.com/).
## Example
## Installation
Kelp Binary can be downloaded from [Releases](https://github.com/gautam8404/kelp/releases) page for Windows and Linux.
## Build
```bash
cargo build --release
```
## About
### Board
- A bitboard[12] array is used to represent the board. Each piece is mapped to a bitboard.
- standard make/unmake move functions are used, unmake move use move history to unmake instead of copy/take approach.
### Search
- Iterative deepening with aspiration windows.
- Negamax with alpha-beta pruning.
- Principal Variation Search.
- Late Move Reduction.
- Null Move Pruning.
- Quiescence Search.
- Transposition Table.
- Move Ordering
- MVV-LVA
- Killer Moves
- History Heuristic
- PV Table
### Evaluation
- Piece Square Tables
- Tapered Eval
- Basic King Safety
- Mobility & Basic Mop Up Evaluation
- Passed Pawns, Isolated Pawns, Doubled Pawns
### TODO
- [ ] Better King Safety and Pawn Shield
- [ ] Better Mobility
- [ ] Better Mop Up Evaluation
- [ ] Opening Book
- [ ] Integrate Syzygy Endgame Tablebases
- [ ] Integrate Stockfish's NNUE
## Tests
Kelp Implements some basic tests suchs as perft test, fen parsing and incremental update of zobrist hash.
Perft results are compared with [Perft Results](https://www.chessprogramming.org/Perft_Results) and incremental update of zobrist hash is compared with scratch generation of zobrist hash.
```bash
cargo test
```
## References & Resources
Resources that helped me a lot in making this engine.
- [Chess Programming Wiki](https://www.chessprogramming.org/Main_Page)
- [Vice by Bluefever Software](https://github.com/bluefeversoft/vice) and corresponfing [playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZ1QII7yudbc-Ky058TEaOstZHVbT-2hg)
- [BBC by Code Monkey King](https://github.com/maksimKorzh/bbc) and the correspponding [playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmN0neTso3Jxh8ZIylk74JpwfiWNI76Cs)
- [Pleco Chess Engine](https://github.com/pleco-rs/Pleco)
- [Chess-rs Chess Engine](https://github.com/ParthPant/chess-rs)
- [Fruit Chess Engine](https://github.com/Warpten/Fruit-2.1)
- [codefish Chess Engine](https://github.com/jsilll/codfish)
- [TSCP Chess Engine](http://www.tckerrigan.com/Chess/TSCP/)
## License
Kelp is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0. See [LICENSE](LICENSE) for details.