PyMinMaximus Part 4: Creating an Opening Book
In or previous posts, we created a chess engine, but we have a glaring weakness: PyMinMaximus wastes time "thinking" about well-known opening positions that have been analyzed for centuries. While PyMinMaximus calculates for 5 seconds to decide between 1.e4 and 1.d4, it could instantly play proven opening theory and save that time for complex middlegame positions.
With an opening book, PyMinMaximus plays the move instantly (0.001 seconds), saving 20-30 seconds in the opening phase. It plays mainline theory with proper move orders and avoids known tactical pitfalls. That's a massive practical advantage! In this post, we’ll solve this problem by implementing opening books from scratch, using the Polyglot format and Zobrist hashing.
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