Bitboard representation of Chess Board
Bitboard-Based Game Representation in Stockfish Stockfish represents the chessboard using bitboards: 64-bit unsigned integers where each bit corresponds to a square on the board. typedef uint64_t Bitboard; Bit 0 (LSB) → A1 Bit 63 (MSB) → H8 This representation allows the engine to manipulate entire sets of squares using fast bitwise operations, which is critical for performance. Piece Encoding enum Piece { NO_PIECE, W_PAWN = 1, W_KNIGHT, W_BISHOP, W_ROOK, W_QUEEN, W_KING, B_PAWN = 9, B_KNIGHT, B_BISHOP, B_ROOK, B_QUEEN, B_KING, PIECE_NB = 16 }; Numeric Structure Piece Value Binary W_PAWN 1 0001 W_KING 6 0110 B_PAWN 9 1001 B_KING 14 1110 Key observations: ...