Computer chess in 487 bytes

The record for the minimum implementation of computer chess since 1983 belonged to the program 1K ZX Chess . On the Sinclair ZX81 computer, it occupied 672 bytes of memory. At the same time, the program contained almost all the rules of a chess game, as well as a bot against a person.


^{The first description of the game in the magazine Your Computer Magazine for February 1983}

32 years later, this record is broken. Group Red Sector Inc. implemented the fully playable version of Chess BootChess in just 487 bytes!

The readme file contains the source code of the program.
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For comparison, this is how the 1K ZX Chess interface looked.


^{Classic beginning: e2-e4}

This is a BootChess game.



BootChess is another amazing assembly language programming example. Such examples are often found in the demoscene, but rarely manage to break the record, having stood already 32 years. Even more impressive is the implementation of BootChess. The program runs from the boot sector on compatible computers under any operating system, be it Windows, Linux, OS X or BSD.