Compressing Chess Moves for Fun and Profit
Chess notation has come a long way since descriptive
notation, now we have nice
and decipherable Standard Algebraic Notation, like Qxf7 (queen takes on
f7) or Nf3 (knight takes on f3).This is a great text format, but a massive waste of
space if you’re trying to store a lot of these. Qxf7 takes 4 bytes, or 32 bits. Let’s do some rough back-of-the-envelope math of how much information is actually being transmitted though.
This move affects one of 6 pieces (3 bits), this move is also a capture (1
b...
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