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FCP, (Forth Chess Program)
a derivation of Tom Kerrigan's simple chess program TSCP 1.71 written by Ian Osgood as an exercise in learning the Forth programming language. At the time it was started, there were no other chess programs in Forth which used modern search techniques. FCP retains the values of small footprint (< 64K) and code clarity. Normally, FCP is used from the Forth command line. There are also drivers for working in XBoard and running EPD test suites.

Enhancements

Although FCP started with a nearly identical evaluation function as an aid to detecting bugs when porting from C to Forth, FCP diverged from TSCP in many ways ^[1]:

• 0x88 ^[2]
• Piece lists
• Track king positions for faster check detection
• Procedural move generation with loop unrolling
• Alpha-beta with aspiration windows
• Using the open parameter stack allows only passing alpha to search and quiescence (the alpha from the ancestor node is -beta for this node)
• Killer heuristic
• Null move pruning
• Check extensions
• Incremental material and pawn evaluation
• Opening Book

Future plans

• Transposition table
• Search extensions
• Late move reductions.

See also

• Acronym

Forum Posts

• TSCP enhancements (Re: Short chess programs) by Ian Osgood, CCC, September 19, 2002

External Links

• FCP home page
• Forth application benchmark suite (ZIP) contains both FCP and another Forth chess program called Brainless by David Kühling ^[3]

References

1. ^ TSCP enhancements (Re: Short chess programs) by Ian Osgood, CCC, September 19, 2002
2. ^ 0x88 is not so smart by Christophe Théron, CCC, June 13, 2000
3. ^ brainless | Free Games software downloads at SourceForge.net

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