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Life & fun · February 14, 2026

Sameshi – a ~1200 Elo chess engine that fits within 2KB

I made a chess engine today, and made it fit within 2KB. I used a variant of MinMax called Negamax, with alpha beta pruning. For the board representation I have used a 120-cell "mailbox". I managed to squeeze in checkmate/stalemate in there, after trimming out some edge cases. I am a great fan of demoscene (computer art subculture) since middle school, and hence it was a ritual i had to perform. For estimating the Elo, I measured 240 automated games against Stockfish Elo levels (1320 to 1600) under fixed depth-5 and some constrained rules, using equal color distribution. Then converted…

Sameshi – a ~1200 Elo chess engine that fits within 2KB launched on February 14, 2026 with 230 votes, #120 of 16,627 launches that month and more than 99% of that year's launches.

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In plain words

Sameshi is a chess engine compressed into just 2KB, playing at approximately 1200 Elo strength. It uses Negamax with alpha-beta pruning and a 120-cell mailbox board representation, including checkmate and stalemate detection. Built as a technical challenge inspired by demoscene traditions, it was tested against Stockfish opponents across 240 games to establish its playing strength. The project is for developers and chess enthusiasts interested in extreme code optimization and compact algorithm implementation.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

a ~1200 Elo chess engine that fits within 2KB. Contribute to datavorous/sameshi development by creating an account on GitHub.

A minimal chess engine supporting a constrained subset of the game. not implemented: castling, en passant, promotion, repetition, 50-move rule. ~1170 Elo (95% CI: 1110-1225) 240 games vs stockfish (1320-1600 levels) fixed depth 5, constrained rules, max 60from github.com

In the maker’s words, at launch

I made a chess engine today, and made it fit within 2KB. I used a variant of MinMax called Negamax, with alpha beta pruning. For the board representation I have used a 120-cell "mailbox". I managed to squeeze in checkmate/stalemate in there, after trimming out some edge cases. I am a great fan of demoscene…

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