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:
“Remember...that each child is a separate person, yours forever, but never fully yours. She can never be all you wished or wanted, or all you know she could be. But she will be a better human being if you can let her be herself.”
—Stella Chess (20th century)
“The machine unmakes the man. Now that the machine is perfect, the engineer is nobody. Every new step in improving the engine restricts one more act of the engineer,—unteaches him.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)