sailMate 0.0.6

A really bad chess engine that served as a learning project

SailMate

🌊 A simple chess engine built from scratch in Python

📦 PyPI: sailMate

Overview

SailMate is a simple chess engine built completely from scratch using Python and object-oriented programming (OOP).
It supports standard piece movement, simple FEN strings, basic evaluation, and a minimax algorithm with alpha-beta pruning.
You can even play against the engine from the command line.

That said, it does not support underpromotion, draws by repetition, or the 50-move rule. Also, since it's written in Python and not highly optimized, it runs quite slowly. I built it mainly as a learning exercise, for fun, and to submit to Shipwrecked.

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How to Use

Fast Install

First, install SailMate:

pip install sailMate

Then write the following code and run:

import sailMate

sailMate.play()

And BOOM, you'll be able to play against the SailMate engine

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🧠 OOP Design

Core Components:

• Piece (abstract base class)

  • Pawn
  • Knight
  • Bishop
  • Rook
  • Queen
  • King (All inherit from Piece)

• Board — Handles game state and possible move generation

• FEN — Parses a simple FEN string into board state

  ⚠️ This does not support full FEN strings. Please remove the trailing data after the piece layout. Example:

  rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1
  

  becomes:

  rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR
  

  import sailMate
  
  myBoard = sailMate.FEN("r1bqkbnr/pppp1ppp/2n5/4p3/3PP3/5N2/PPP2PPP/RNBQKB1R", False)
  # First parameter: simplified FEN string
  # Second parameter: who plays (True → White, False → Black)
  

• evaluate() — Simple material-based evaluation

  print(sailMate.evaluate(myBoard, 0)) 
  # First parameter: board object
  # Second parameter: depth
  

• minimax(), minimaxImproved() — Minimax with alpha-beta pruning

  print(sailMate.minimaxImproved(myBoard, 2)) 
  # First parameter: board object
  # Second parameter: depth
  

• play() — Command-line gameplay loop

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📁 Check out sailMate/sailMate.py for more functions