[seanhunter]

Yes there is also another factor in a chess position which is not included in this encoding which is who is next to move.

That being said the basic idea is really interesting. I'd love to see a fully opensource competitor to chessbase. For people who don't know, chessbase is a subscription service which gives you a windows-only chess analysis platform and game database. It allows you to do advanced searches (eg I want to find games by 2500+ rated players in the Caro-Kann where black has a pawn on c5 and a bishop on e7 or whatever) which advanced players use to do "prep" (deep positional analysis typically of opening positions) which they save in reams of files prior to memorization. It's probably not an exaggeration to say nearly all strong players and serious improvers subscribe to it.

Chessbase made themselves persona non grata in the opensource world by apparently ripping off parts of stockfish and selling it under the names "Fat Fritz" and "Houdini"[1] and even were that not the case it would be great to have mac and linux opensource options.

[1] https://stockfishchess.org/blog/2022/public-court-hearing-so...

[emptybits]

Chessbase and the Stockfish developers came to an agreement after that public court hearing.[1] I don't think it changes the landscape at all and it doesn't help MacOS or Linux users, so I agree with all you said.

X is to Chessbase for data as Lichess is to Chess.com for play. Solve for X.

I'll open my wallet for a community/open equivalent. But €500 and Chessbase's mildly bewildering selection and tiers of subscription services are too rich for this amateur hack.[2]

[1] https://www.chess.com/news/view/chessbase-stockfish-reach-se...

[2] https://shop.chessbase.com/en/products/chessbase_17_premium_...