UCI Chess Engine

VeryChess

A project focused on developing chess engine playing on personal PCs, evaluation and testing chess engines. Built by Oleh Sych.

A glowing gold chess knight etched onto a microprocessor surrounded by circuit-board traces, representing the VeryChess engine.

About VeryChess

VeryChess is a UCI-compatible chess engine developed as a personal software project at the intersection of chess and programming. The engine is designed to work with UCI-compatible chess GUIs such as Arena, Cute Chess, and BanksiaGUI.

Development is focused on building a clean, understandable architecture, improving engine strength through systematic testing, and documenting every step of the journey publicly.

About the Author
  • UCI-compatible — works with standard chess GUIs
  • Tested in round-robin tournaments
  • Releases documented with full change notes
  • Results published with PGN game files

Latest Release

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VeryChess 0.3.0

Date: 2026 July 29  ·  Release

Release Notes

What's new

This release covers two areas: search efficiency and time management.
Five refinements sit on top of the table: History-aware reductions, Principal-variation reductions (LMR now applies inside PV nodes), Iteration-completion prediction (the engine now starts a new deepening iteration only when it predicts it can finish it within the budget), More realistic game-length assumption, "Move Overhead" is now functional.

Latest Tournament

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Project Goals

  • Build a clean, understandable chess engine architecture
  • Improve engine strength step by step through testing and measurement
  • Run repeatable, documented engine tournaments
  • Publish releases, experiments, and progress openly