[IAEP] Chess activities

[Kevin Kirton]

Thanks Mokurai,

I had no idea chess engines came in such small packages.
Interesting that shogi (Japanese chess) "has a higher branching factor
than other chess variants" because taken pieces can be re-taken and
re-deployed.
But if an ordinary chess game can be put on the XO with a small chess
engine, that would be great.

Sounds like a good project to suggest to some of the university
students that are working on activities now (I certainly don't have
the programming skills to do it myself) but, as a teacher, I'm sure
there would be many students who would thrive at learning and playing
chess, first against a chess engine in the XO to learn how to play,
then against other students.

Kevin Kirton


> There are chess engines in a wide range of sizes and competences. The
> gnuchess 6.0 tarball is 561K. It can beat most amateur players handily,
> which is quite sufficient for teaching the rudiments of the game, and
> rather more.
>
> http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/chess/