Vantage is a high-performance, UCI-compatible chess engine written in Rust. It utilizes magic bitboards for move generation and advanced search techniques to play at a competitive level.

Note: Vantage is a command-line engine. To play against it, you need a chess GUI like Arena, Cute Chess, or Banksia.

Just want to play?

1. Download the latest release for your OS
2. Extract the archive
3. Load vantage (or vantage.exe on Windows) into your chess GUI
4. Start playing!

You do not need to install Rust. Just download the latest engine release:

1. Go to the Releases Page.
2. Download the zip file for your OS (vantage-windows-x86_64.zip or vantage-linux-x86_64.tar.gz).
3. Extract the contents.
4. Load vantage into your favorite Chess GUI.

Recommended GUIs:

• Cute Chess (Cross-platform, actively maintained)
• Arena (Windows)
• Banksia GUI (Cross-platform)

If you want to modify the code or run tests:

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/vaishakkmenon/Vantage.git
cd Vantage/backend

# Run Unit Tests (300+ tests)
cargo test --release

# Build the Engine (Optimized)
cargo build --release

The executable will be located at target/release/vantage.

• Bitboards: Full 64-bit representation for all pieces.
• Magic Bitboards: Ultra-fast sliding piece attack lookups (Rook/Bishop) using precomputed tables.
• Zobrist Hashing: Efficient position identification for the Transposition Table.

• Alpha-Beta Pruning: With Principal Variation Search (PVS) for optimal tree traversal.
• Iterative Deepening: Progressive search depth for better time management.
• Transposition Table: 512MB hash table caches search results to avoid re-calculating known positions.
• Move Ordering: Prioritizes captures (MVV-LVA) and killer moves to maximize pruning.
• Opening Book: Supports Polyglot (.bin) opening books for varied play.
• PeSTO Evaluation: Piece-square tables with tapered evaluation for midgame/endgame.

Benchmarking and rating tests are planned for future releases.

Vantage implements the Universal Chess Interface (UCI) protocol with the following capabilities:

Supported go Commands:

• go depth <n> - Search to a fixed depth
• go movetime <ms> - Search for a fixed time in milliseconds
• go wtime <ms> btime <ms> - Time control for both sides
• go winc <ms> binc <ms> - Increment per move
• go movestogo <n> - Moves until next time control
• go infinite - Search until stopped

Current Limitations:

• No setoption support (hash size and other parameters are fixed)
• Single-threaded only (no SMP/multi-threading)
• Fixed 512MB transposition table

Memory Usage:

• Transposition Table: 512MB (power-of-2 aligned)
• Additional overhead: ~50-100MB for move generation and search data structures

1. Open Cute Chess
2. Go to Tools > Settings > Engines
3. Click Add and browse to the vantage executable
4. Click OK to save
5. Start a new game and select Vantage as one of the players

1. Open Arena
2. Go to Engines > Install New Engine
3. Browse to and select the vantage.exe file
4. Click OK to install
5. Select Vantage from the engine list to play

You can also run Vantage directly in a terminal for debugging or scripting:

./vantage
uci
isready
position startpos moves e2e4 e7e5
go depth 6

Example UCI Session:

> uci
id name Vantage
id author Vaishak Menon
uciok

> isready
readyok

> position startpos moves e2e4
> go depth 8
info depth 1 score cp 50 nodes 20 time 1 pv e7e5
info depth 2 score cp 35 nodes 85 time 2 pv e7e5 g1f3
...
bestmove e7e5

Planned Features:

• ELO rating through tournament testing
• Performance benchmarking suite
• Configurable hash table size via UCI options
• Multi-threading support (Lazy SMP)
• Endgame tablebase support (Syzygy)
• Neural network evaluation (NNUE)

Known Limitations:

• Single-threaded execution only
• No UCI setoption command support
• Fixed 512MB transposition table (not user-configurable)
• No time management tuning options

Want to contribute? See the Contributing section below!

• Language: Rust 🦀
• Tests: 300+ unit tests with 100% pass rate (enforced by CI)
• Platform: Windows & Linux (cross-platform support via GitHub Actions)
• Architecture: Single-threaded bitboard-based engine
• Code Quality: Clippy-approved, formatted with rustfmt

Contributions are welcome! Whether you're fixing bugs, adding features, or improving documentation:

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Make your changes and add tests
4. Run cargo test --release to ensure all tests pass
5. Run cargo clippy to check for issues
6. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing feature')
7. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
8. Open a Pull Request

Areas where contributions are especially welcome:

• Performance optimizations
• Additional search techniques
• UCI option support
• Multi-threading implementation
• Documentation improvements
• Bug reports and testing

Vantage builds upon the work of the chess programming community:

• Chess Programming Wiki - Comprehensive reference for chess engine development
• PeSTO - Piece-square tables for evaluation
• Polyglot Book Format - Opening book implementation
• Magic Bitboards - Fast sliding piece move generation technique

Special thanks to the Rust chess programming community for their open-source contributions and discussions.

• Solution: Ensure you've downloaded the correct version for your OS (Windows vs Linux)
• Solution: Check that the file has execute permissions (Linux: chmod +x vantage)
• Solution: Try running from command line first to see error messages

• Check: Are you using the release build? Debug builds are significantly slower
• Check: Is your GUI set to very long time controls?
• Note: Vantage is currently single-threaded, so it won't use all CPU cores

• Cause: Vantage doesn't support all UCI commands yet
• Workaround: Avoid using setoption commands in your GUI configuration

Still having issues? Open an issue on GitHub with:

• Your OS and version
• The GUI you're using
• Steps to reproduce the problem
• Any error messages

This project is licensed under the GPL-3.0 License - see the LICENSE file for details.

This means you're free to:

• ✅ Use Vantage for personal or commercial purposes
• ✅ Modify the source code
• ✅ Distribute copies

With the requirement that:

• ⚠️ Derivative works must also be open-source under GPL-3.0
• ⚠️ You must include the original license and copyright notice

Developed by Vaishak Menon

• Portfolio: vaishakmenon.com
• GitHub: @vaishakkmenon

Star the repo to follow development and new releases!