Chess Championship 2024 in Python with Chessnut

Abish Pius
2 min readNov 26, 2024

Chessnut is a lightweight Python package designed to model a chessboard, handle moves, and track the game’s state. Unlike full-fledged chess engines, Chessnut doesn’t include AI for playing games or a graphical interface (GUI). Instead, it focuses on simplicity and utility, making it an excellent tool for studying chess mechanics or integrating with other chess-related applications.

What Is Chessnut?

Chessnut is a minimalistic package for chess enthusiasts and developers who need a straightforward way to:

  • Import/export games in Forsyth-Edwards Notation (FEN).
  • Generate a list of legal moves for a given board position.
  • Validate and apply chess moves (including special moves like en passant and castling).
  • Maintain a history of moves and corresponding FEN representations.

With only about 200 lines of code, Chessnut prioritizes simplicity. Its core functionality resides in two primary classes: Board (used internally) and Game. This design makes Chessnut easy to use, extend, and integrate into custom projects.

Installing Chessnut

Chessnut is available via PIP, setup.py, or as a standalone module. Below are step-by-step instructions for…

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Abish Pius
Abish Pius

Written by Abish Pius

Data Science Professional, Python Enthusiast, turned LLM Engineer

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