Chess

Chess is one of the world's most popular games. Chess is played between two players on a 8x8 checkered board. At the start, each player (one controlling the white pieces, the other controlling the black pieces) controls sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, and eight pawns. The object of the game is to checkmate the opponent's king, whereby the king is under immediate attack (in "check") and there is no way to remove it from attack on the next move.

Theoreticians have developed extensive chess strategies and tactics since the game's inception. Chess is deeply influenced by the abilities of chess programs and the opportunity for online play. In 1997 Deep Blue became the first computer to beat the reigning World Champion in a match when it defeated Garry Kasparov.

The number of legal positions in chess is estimated to be between 1043 and 1050, with a game-tree complexity of approximately 10123.  In theory, a powerful enough computer could play perfect chess without heuristics simply by searching the game tree and evaluating positions on win-lose-draw criteria. However, in practice, available computers have difficulty looking more than a few moves ahead. Hence, some simple heuristics can help enormously in making the computer behave more intelligently.

Five main aspects being used in planning Chess hueristics: 1. Material value 2.Piece position relative to board 3. Piece position relative to other pieces 4. Opportunities and commitments 5. Mobility