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+# Zeal
+**Zeal** is a UCI-compliant chess engine written in Rust. I began writing Zeal as a side project while learning Rust. Beating a top engine like Stockfish felt like a long journey, so it seemed fitting to pair that challenge with learning Rust. Zeal is now nearing its first release, though it's still far from its ultimate goal.
+
+## Running and building Zeal
+### Play on Lichess
+[lichess]() - TODO
+
+### Run locally
+```
+git clone https://github.com/stefiosif/zeal.git
+cargo run -- --mode uci
+```
+
+### Run on Cutechess GUI (Windows)
+```
+git clone https://github.com/stefiosif/zeal.git
+cd scripts
+./build_windows_bat.sh
+```
+After building, find the executable in target/x86_64-pc-windows-gnu/release. Use zeal.bat to add Zeal to the Cutechess GUI.
+
+## Core
+### Board Representation
+- Bitboards
+- Redundant Mailbox for piece-square look ups
+### Move Generation
+- Pseudo-legal move generation
+- Magic bitboards for sliding pieces
+- Make/Unmake instead of Copy/Make
+### Communication Protocol
+- UCI
+### Search
+- Negamax
+- Alpha Beta
+- Quiescence
+- Move ordering (MVV LVA)
+### Evaluation
+- Material evaluation
+- Piece-Square table evaluation
+
+## Next features
+- [ ] Iterative deepening
+- [ ] Principal Variation
+- [ ] Zorbist hashing
+- [ ] Transposition tables
+- [ ] ...
+
+## Rating
+There's no ratings yet for Zeal.
+
+## Acknowledgements
+Huge thanks to CodeMonkeyKing and his chess programming videos. His simplistic approach helped me understand the components that constitute a chess engine. Rustic's [roadmap](https://rustic-chess.org/introduction/roadmap.html) guided me in identifying which part of the engine to build next, while the book is an excellent resource for understanding various chess programming concepts. The [Chess Programming Wiki](https://www.chessprogramming.org/Main_Page) provides detailed information about all chess programming topics. Last but not least, I have been reading the code of various chess engines to take ideas, some of them are [bbc](https://github.com/maksimKorzh/bbc), [rustic](https://github.com/mvanthoor/rustic), [tcheran](https://github.com/jgilchrist/tcheran), [purple](https://github.com/JLErvin/purple) and [rush](https://github.com/lefebvreb/rush).
+
+Amazing tools:
+- [Bitboard Calculator](https://gekomad.github.io/Cinnamon/BitboardCalculator/)
+- [Lichess Editor](https://lichess.org/editor)
+- [cutechess](https://github.com/cutechess/cutechess)
+- [perftree](https://github.com/agausmann/perftree)
+
+Other resources:
+- [The Fascinating Programming of a Chess Engine](https://youtu.be/w4FFX_otR-4?si=_Rt4wcJZsS2duMQM)
+- [Coding Adventures: Making a Better Chess Bot](https://youtu.be/_vqlIPDR2TU?si=PKWe_Qu_CPGwIAwE)
+- Writing a Chess Engine [Move Generation](https://www.josherv.in/2021/03/19/chess-1/) and [Move Selection](https://www.josherv.in/2022/12/17/chess-2/)