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This page is intended as a dictionary, glossary or proxy of common chess programming terms. It is intended to facilitate the navigation, especially for the pages that do not have a clearly defined ancestor, and as a cross-reference between the pages containing similar material covered from the different angles. The latter situation might indicate that some kind of merging or re-editing is necessary.

=Dictionary= Please enter the words in an alphabetical order.

A

 * AAAI - Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
 * ABDADA - Alpha-Bêta Distribué avec Droit d'Anesse
 * ABK - Arena's opening book format
 * ACCA - Americas' Computer Chess Association
 * ACM - Association for Computing Machinery
 * All-Nodes
 * Alpha
 * Alpha-Beta
 * ANN - Artificial Neural Network
 * Annihilation of Defense
 * Anti-Computerchess
 * Anti-Diagonals
 * Attacks

B

 * Battery
 * Best-First
 * Beta
 * Beta-Cutoff = Cutoff
 * Big-endian
 * BIN - PolyGlot opening book format
 * Bit
 * Bitboards
 * BitScan
 * Blockade
 * Brute-Force
 * Bound
 * Butterfly Boards
 * Byte

C

 * Candidate - Candidate Passed Pawn
 * Castling
 * Castling Rights
 * CCRL - Computer Chess Rating Lists
 * CEGT - Chess Engines Grand Tournament
 * Center
 * Centipawns
 * Check
 * Checkmate
 * Chessboard
 * Chess Engine Communication Protocol
 * CHREST - Chunk Hierarchy and REtrieval STructures
 * CLI - Command Line Interface
 * cn - Conspiracy Numbers
 * Color
 * Combination
 * Contempt Factor
 * CQL - Chess Query Language
 * CSVN - Computerschaak Vereniging Nederland
 * CTG - ChessBase opening book format
 * Cut-Nodes
 * Cutoff = Beta-Cutoff

D

 * Decoying
 * Deflection
 * Demolition of Pawns
 * Depth - Search depth
 * Depth-First
 * Diagonals
 * Diminishing Returns
 * Discovered Attack
 * Discovered Check
 * Double
 * Double Attack
 * Double Check
 * Double Word
 * Draw
 * DTC - Depth to Conversion
 * DTM - Depth to Mate
 * DTS - Dynamic Tree Splitting
 * DTZ - Depth to Zeroing

E

 * EBF - Effective Branching Factor
 * ECO - Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings
 * EGBB - Endgame Bitbases
 * EGTB - Endgame Tablebases
 * Endianness
 * En passant
 * En prise
 * EPAM - Elementary Perceiver and Memorizer
 * EPD - Extended Position Description
 * ETC - Enhanced Transposition Cutoff
 * Evaluation Function
 * Exact Score

F

 * Fail-Hard
 * Fail-High
 * Fail-High Nodes = Cut-Nodes
 * Fail-Low
 * Fail-Low Nodes = All-Nodes
 * Fail-Soft
 * Faker
 * FAN - Figurine Algebraic Notation
 * FEN - Forsyth-Edwards Notation
 * Fifty-move rule
 * FHR - Fail-High Reductions
 * Fianchetto
 * Files
 * FRC - Fischer Random Chess, also known as Chess960
 * Frontier Node
 * Futility pruning

G

 * G 6 - Gruppo Scacchi e Informatica (gsei)
 * GHI = Graph History Interaction
 * GUI - Graphical User Interface

H

 * Half-open File = Semi-open File
 * Hanging Pawns
 * Hanging Piece
 * Hidden Passed Pawn = Sneaker
 * History Heuristic
 * Horizon Effect

I

 * IBV - Integrated Bounds and Values
 * ICCA - International Computer Chess Association (until 2002)
 * ICGA - International Computer Games Association
 * ID - Iterative Deepening
 * IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
 * Interception
 * Interference
 * IID - Internal Iterative Deepening
 * IPON - Ingo's Ponder On Rating List

J

 * Jamboree

K

 * KCEC - Kirr's Chess Engine Comparison
 * Killer Move - Killer Heuristic

L

 * LAN - Long Algebraic Notation
 * LBR - Last Best Reply
 * Leaf Nodes
 * Little-endian
 * LMR - Late Move Reductions
 * Loose Piece
 * Lower Bound
 * LOS - Likelihood of Superiority
 * LOS Table


 * LS1B - Least Significant One Bit

M

 * MAPP - Memory-aided Pattern Perceiver
 * Mate = Checkmate
 * MCTS - Monte-Carlo Tree Search
 * Millipawns
 * Minimax
 * Moves
 * MPC - Multi–ProbCut
 * MS1B - Most Significant One Bit
 * MTD(f) - Memory-enhanced Test Driver
 * MVV-LVA - Most Valuable Victim - Least Valuable Aggressor

N

 * Negamax
 * NegaScout
 * Nibble
 * NIC-Key - New In Chess opening classification
 * NMH - Null Move Heuristic
 * NMMH - Neural MoveMap Heuristic
 * NMO - Null Move Observation
 * NN - Neural Network
 * Node
 * Node Types
 * NPS - Nodes per Second
 * Null Window
 * NUMA - Non-Uniform Memory Access

O

 * Open File
 * Opening Book
 * Opposition
 * Oracle
 * Overloading

P

 * Pawns Breakthrough
 * Passed Pawn
 * PDS - Proof-Number and Disproof-Number Search
 * Perft - Performance Test
 * Permanent Brain = Pondering
 * Pieces
 * Piece-Square Tables
 * Pin
 * PGN - Portable Game Notation
 * Ply
 * PNS - Proof-Number Search (PnS, Pn-Search)
 * Pondering
 * Pre Frontier Node
 * Pre-processing Piece-Square Tables
 * Pre Scan Heuristics - Oracle
 * Pruning
 * PSH = Pre Scan Heuristics, Oracle
 * Pursuit (perpetual attack)
 * PV - Principal Variation
 * PV-Nodes
 * PVS - Principal Variation Search
 * PVS - Principal Variation Splitting

Q

 * Quad Word
 * QS - Quiescence Search

R

 * R - Depth Reduction R
 * Ranks
 * Razoring
 * Reductions
 * Root

S

 * Sacrifice
 * SAN - Standard Algebraic Notation
 * Scout - Scout-Algorithm
 * SE - Singular Extensions
 * SEE - Static Exchange Evaluation
 * Semi-open file = Half-open File
 * Sentry
 * Shannon Trophy
 * Sibling node
 * Side to move
 * SIMD - Single Instruction Multiple Data
 * Skewer
 * SMP - Symmetric multiprocessing
 * Sneaker = Hidden Passed Pawn
 * SOMA - Swapping Off Material Analyzer
 * SOMA - Smith One-Move Analyzer
 * Space Clearance
 * Square
 * SSDF - Svenska schackdatorföreningen
 * SSE - Streaming SIMD Extensions
 * SSS = State Space Search like SSS* and Dual*
 * Stalemate
 * Strategy
 * Stop square
 * SWAR - SIMD Within A Register

T

 * Tactics
 * TD - Temporal Difference Learning
 * Triangulation
 * TT - Transposition Table

U

 * UCI - Universal Chess Interface
 * Undermining
 * Upper Bound

W

 * WCCC - World Computer Chess Championship
 * WCSC - World Chess Software Championship
 * WinBoard
 * Window
 * WMCCC - World Microcomputer Chess Championship
 * Word - Computer Word

X

 * x86
 * x86-64
 * XBoard
 * X-ray

Y

 * YBWC - Young Brothers Wait Concept

Z

 * Zobrist Hashing
 * Zugzwang
 * Zwischenzug

=External Links=
 * Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures from National Institute of Standards and Technology
 * Glossary of Chess from Wikipedia
 * The W. Ross Ashby Digital Archive - Index from William Ross Ashby's Digital Archive

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