Chess Tutor

Chess Tutor (Live) is a single-page web application that teaches novices how to play chess. While you play against the computer it shows you:

• your available moves
• threats to your pieces
• which of your moves are safe and which are not safe

Chess Tutor's back-end runs atop the lightweight Ruby on Tracks controller/view framework. The front-end is plain JavaScript with jQuery. The AI utilizes a depth-first, minmax search to a depth of 3, and leverages a Ruby C extension library to evaluate 9,000+ moves per second.

Contents

• Playing the Game
• Design
  • State
  • Front-end
  • Back-end
• Implementation
  • Routes
  • Controller
  • Game
  • Board
  • Piece
  • Player
  • ComputerPlayer
  • C Extension Library
• License

Playing the Game

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The first time you visit the site, it starts a new game and stores a compact copy in a browser cookie. When you revisit the site, you can pickup where you left off, or start a new game.

You play White and the computer plays Black. When it's your turn to make a move the game displays the following indicators:

Indicator	Description	Indicator	Description
	It draws a thick border around pieces you can move		When one of your moveable pieces is threatened (i.e., it can be captured by the opponent's next move) it adds a gradient background.
	If one of your pieces is threatened and can't move, it adds a solid background.

When you mouse over a moveable piece the game highlights valid moves:

Indicator	Description	Indicator	Description
	Green means the move is safe; the square is not threatened by any opposing piece.		Pink means the move is not safe; the square is threatened by an opposing piece.
	When you mouse over a threatened piece or move, it flashes the opposing pieces that pose a threat.

Design

State

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The first time you visit the site, it starts a new game and saves a compact representation in a browser cookie. This cookie requires fewer than 300 characters for a typical 40-move game. It uses a pseudo-FEN notation to represent the game board and uses a similarly compact notation to record all the moves made by both players.

Front-end

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The front-end's only concern is rendering; it contains no knowledge of chess and could be adapted to other board games.

When the back-end renders the board it assigns a unique ID to each square (e.g., "e1", "h7"). The front-end submits AJAX requests to get the player's moves and threats, and the back-end returns the information coded to each square's unique ID.

The front-end toggles class attributes on the affected squares, and CSS handles the rest.

Back-end

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The back-end implements an API with the following entry points:

• POST /new Resets the board to starting positions and returns the board state (see below).

• GET /show Returns a JSON object with the current board state. It lists the captured pieces and the locations of the active pieces. Pieces are represented by their Unicode chess symbols.

  {
    captured: {
      white: [ ],
      black: [ ]
    },
    active: {
      a8: "♜",
      c8: "♝",
      d8: "♛",
      e8: "♚",
      ...
    }
  }

• GET /moves Returns a JSON object detailing the current player's moves and threats. Each key is the position of one the player's pieces. The values are where it can move. For example, in the following snippet, the piece on b4 can move to b5 or c5.

  player: {
    b4: [
      "b5",
      "c5"
    ],
    c4: [
      "b5",
      "a6",
      ...
    ],
    e4: [ ],
    ...
  }

  For threats, the keys are the threatened squares and the values are the threatening squares. In this snippet, the square e6 is threatened by opposing pieces on d7 and f7.

  threats: {
    a6: [
      "b7"
    ],
    e6: [
      "d7",
      "f7"
    ],
    ...
  }

• POST /move {from: loc1, to: loc2 } Execute the human player's move. The back-end moves the piece from loc1 to loc2, updates the cookie and returns the new board.

• GET /move Execute the computer player's move; the back-end calculates the next move (this can take several seconds); updates the cookie, and returns the move and new board state:

  {
    from: "b8",
    to: "c6",
    board: {
      captured: {
        ...
      },
      active: {
        ...
      }
    }
  }

Implementation

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Chess Tutor's runs atop the lightweight Ruby on Tracks back-end framework, with one small adaptation; the server accepts a board as a command line parameter so that during development you can bypass intermediate play and jump directly to a specific state.

The file chess_server.rb is the main entry point. It parses the command line, maps the application's routes, then builds and starts the Rack server.

Routes

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router = Router.new
router.draw do
  get Regexp.new("^/$"), ChessController, :init
  post Regexp.new("^/new$"), ChessController, :new
  get Regexp.new("^/show$"), ChessController, :show
  get Regexp.new("^/moves$"), ChessController, :moves
  post Regexp.new("^/move$"), ChessController, :move
  get Regexp.new("^/move$"), ChessController, :make_move
end

Controller

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ChessController in chess_controller.rb implements the back-end actions.

When a request arrives, the router creates a new controller instance. The controller instantiates Game, Player and ComputerPlayer objects as needed, and performs the action. When the response is complete an after_action saves the new game state in the user's session.

Game

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The Game class implements the high-level game interface. It mostly delegates to the Board class, but has the important responsibility of tracking who is the current player (i.e., White or Black).

Board

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The Board tracks pieces and moves. It implements the logic for castling and pawn promotion, but otherwise delegates chess knowledge to Piece and its descendants.

Pieces are stored internally in a flat list. They can be indexed using [row, column] coordinates, but this is rarely used outside the class because it incorporates the Enumerable mixin to facilitate iteration.

Board's major methods are:

• #move_piece moves a piece
• #undo_move reverses a move
• #state returns the encoded board state
• #captured returns the captured pieces on both sides
• #in_check? tests whether a color is in check

Piece

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Piece is the base class for chess pieces; a piece knows its color and board position.

#valid_moves returns the places where the piece can move. Internally, Piece calls its descendant's #moves method and rejects moves that would place/leave the player in check:

def valid_moves
  result = moves
  result.select! { |pos| valid_move?(pos) }
  result
end
  
def valid_move?(end_pos)
  board.move_piece(current_pos, end_pos)
  result = !board.in_check?(color)
  board.undo_move
  result
end

King overrides #valid_moves to account for its unique behaviors. The other descendants implement #moves and rely on Piece to handle validation.

Player

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Player has a color and holds a reference to the Game:

• #valid_moves aggregates and returns the player's pieces' valid moves
• #threats returns threats to the player's pieces
• #move_threats returns threats to each potential move

ComputerPlayer

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ComputerPlayer calculates chess moves.

#get_move implements a depth-first minmax search with Alpha-Beta pruning to a depth of 3.

def minmax(max_depth, depth = 0, alpha = -100000, beta = 100000,
  maximizing = true)
  return nil, board_value if depth >= max_depth

  best_move = nil;
  best_value = maximizing ? -99999 : 99999
  player = maximizing ? self.color : opposite(self.color)

  each_move(player) do |move|
    board.move_piece(*move)
    _, value = minmax(max_depth, depth + 1, alpha, beta, !maximizing)
    board.undo_move

    if maximizing
      best_move = move if value > best_value
      best_value = value if value > best_value
      alpha = best_value if best_value > alpha
    else
      best_move = move if value < best_value
      best_value = value if value < best_value
      beta = best_value if beta < best_value
    end

    break if beta <= alpha
  end
  return best_move, best_value
end

The branching factor in chess is around 40 and on its turn ComputerPlayer may have to evaluate upwards of 64,000 moves. For better performance, it uses an extension library written in C, and can evaluate 9,000+ moves per second.

ChessUtil

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ChessUtil is the Ruby C extension library that generates moves and evaluates boards. Ruby is a fast language for developing code, and a slow language for executing code. ChessUtil implements the most heavily used operations in C so that Chess Tutor can perform the millions of required calculations in reasonable time.

• #in_bounds tests if a position falls within the 8x8 board coordinates
• #moves_include tests if an array of moves includes a position
• #get_piece_at returns the piece on the board
• #set_piece_at places a piece on the board
• #get_moves generates moves for a sliding piece (i.e., Bishop, Rook and Queen)
• #get_pawn_moves generates moves for a Pawn
• #get_knight_moves generates moves for a Knight
• #get_king_moves generates moves for a King
• #get_board_value calculates the value of a board

License

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Chess Tutor Copyright (c) Dexter Sealy

Chess Tutor is free software; you can distribute it and/or modify it subject to the terms of the MIT license.