Chess AI is not the be-all, end-all or anything at all.
That's why such low performance processors can run it, like those little chess computers.
Consider this, each piece has a value, and that value is ascertained by putting a piece in one of the middle squares (there's 4) - then count how many moves each piece can make starting from there.
A knight is 8, a pawn is 1, and the king should be 1000, because it should be more powerfull than the whole board put together so it's an ultimate goal.
Now, imagine you have a big list of every possible move you can make - it's fairly easy to do this, say an array of moves - by buffering the current board, then performing each move and calculating the board score, you can check a big list of moves, and select the highest scoring move. Things get more complicated when you look into opposing moves, but that's chess AI in a nutshell.
I'm working on a chess game part time, on my laptop - well I should say it's the 3rd chess game I've started, but within 2 days I had it playing chess with itself, not smart - just the most obvious moves, but for 2 days work you can't ask for more.
Best bet is to just get stuck in - but don't expect a major lesson in anything except data management.
''Stick that in your text and scroll it!.''
