Tahl

An aggressive chess engine written using the Monte Carlo Tree Search with the aim of being trained to play like the legendary grandmaster Mikhail Tal

Input format for the Neural Network

We slice the board into 28 layers of 2D bit arrays to feed the network and expect a 12 layer 2D bit array output.

Legend: 1 = active, 0 = empty
Orientation: rank 8 (top) → rank 1 (bottom), files a → h

---

SLICES 1 - 4: Piece information

W Pawns	W Rooks	WKnights	WBishops
00000000	10000001	01000010	00100100
11111111	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000

---

SLICES 5 - 8: Piece information

W Queen	W King	B Pawns	B Rooks
00010000	00001000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	11111111	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	10000001

---

SLICES 9 - 12: Piece information

BKnights	BBishops	B Queen	B King
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
01000010	00100100	00010000	00001000

---

SLICES 13 - 16: White Castling Rights and Castling availability

White KS	White QS	White KS	White QS
11111111	11111111	00000000	00000000
11111111	11111111	00000000	00000000
11111111	11111111	00000000	00000000
11111111	11111111	00000000	00000000
11111111	11111111	00000000	00000000
11111111	11111111	00000000	00000000
11111111	11111111	00000000	00000000
11111111	11111111	00000000	00000000

---

SLICES 17 - 20: Black Castling Rights and Castling availability

Black KS	Black QS	Black KS	Black QS
11111111	11111111	00000000	00000000
11111111	11111111	00000000	00000000
11111111	11111111	00000000	00000000
11111111	11111111	00000000	00000000
11111111	11111111	00000000	00000000
11111111	11111111	00000000	00000000
11111111	11111111	00000000	00000000
11111111	11111111	00000000	00000000

---

SLICES 21 - 24: En Passant

EP - En Passant, EPO - En Passant Origin

EP White	EPOWhite	EP Black	EPOBLACK
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000

---

SLICES 25 - 28: Empty (Maybe for future use)

t-1	t-2	t-3	t-4
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000
00000000	00000000	00000000	00000000