[ANN] Zugblitz – Yet another open source, C-based chess engine

[p1x3r]

Hi everyone,

I’d like to introduce a project I’ve been working on called Zugblitz.
(It was previously announced as “Golem” and has been renamed to avoid a name collision.)

Zugblitz is a UCI-compatible chess engine written in C, developed primarily for learning purposes.

GitHub Repository:
https://github.com/P1X3R/zugblitz

My goal with Zugblitz was to build a capable engine from the ground up without external libraries, focusing purely on move-generation logic and search efficiency.

Performance & Technical Notes:
The engine is currently UCI-compliant and supports all standard rules (Castling, En Passant, 50-move rule, etc.).
Here are some performance benchmarks from my local machine:

• Perft (with incremental eval): ~15M NPS
• Perft (no incremental eval): ~20M NPS
• Search: ~4.4M NPS
• Hardware: Intel Pentium Silver N5030 @ 1.10GHz, 4GB RAM

Strength & Testing:
While I don't have a formal Elo estimate yet, I suspect it plays around the 2000 Elo range based on initial tests.
I would be very grateful if anyone with a testing environment could run a few games against similar engines and share the results or a PGN.

I am also open to any feedback on the source code or suggestions for search optimizations.

Thanks!

[Aleks Peshkov]

Code: Select all

Results of zugblitz vs petrel1.0 (10+0.1, NULL, 64MB, UHO_Lichess_4852_v1.epd):
Elo: 79.35 +/- 47.84, nElo: 118.97 +/- 68.79
Games: 98, Wins: 40, Losses: 18, Draws: 40, Points: 60.0 (61.22 %)

Code: Select all

Results of zugblitz vs petrel2.1 (10+0.1, NULL, 64MB, UHO_Lichess_4852_v1.epd):
Elo: -436.43 +/- 126.49, nElo: -652.25 +/- 68.10
Games: 100, Wins: 2, Losses: 87, Draws: 11, Points: 7.5 (7.50 %)

Petrel1.0 is exactly 2000 Elo CCRL Blitz. Petrel2.1 is 2624.
Your engine should be around 2200 at LTC.

[p1x3r]

Code: Select all

Results of zugblitz vs petrel1.0 (10+0.1, NULL, 64MB, UHO_Lichess_4852_v1.epd):
Elo: 79.35 +/- 47.84, nElo: 118.97 +/- 68.79
Games: 98, Wins: 40, Losses: 18, Draws: 40, Points: 60.0 (61.22 %)

Code: Select all

Results of zugblitz vs petrel2.1 (10+0.1, NULL, 64MB, UHO_Lichess_4852_v1.epd):
Elo: -436.43 +/- 126.49, nElo: -652.25 +/- 68.10
Games: 100, Wins: 2, Losses: 87, Draws: 11, Points: 7.5 (7.50 %)

Petrel1.0 is exactly 2000 Elo CCRL Blitz. Petrel2.1 is 2624.
Your engine should be around 2200 at LTC.

Thanks you bro