A chess engine is a computer program that calculates chess position and chess moves.
The chess engine decides what moves to make, but typically does not interact directly with the user. Most chess engines do not have their own graphical user interface (GUI) but are rather console applications that communicate with a GUI such as XBoard, WinBoard or glChess via a standard protocol. This allows the user to play against multiple engines without learning a new user interface for each, and allows different engines to play against each other.
Read more about Chess Engine: Interface Protocol, Increasing Strength
Famous quotes containing the words chess and/or engine:
“The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem.... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.”
—Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968)
“There is a small steam engine in his brain which not only sets the cerebral mass in motion, but keeps the owner in hot water.”
—Unknown. New York Weekly Mirror (July 5, 1845)