Codebeez Hackathon: Duel with Your Custom-Built Chess Engine

Have you tried to play chess before and realized you just weren't cut out for it? Have you tried playing against friends or family and come up short? Well now might be your chance to shine! In this Hackathon we will be dueling it out in chess matches in a tournament style setting with a twist: we're not playing ourselves. Instead, we'll be writing our own (terrible) chess bots and have them battle against each other and see which one will come out on top!

A custom chess platform is developed for this Hackathon in which participants can connect to with their newly written bots and play against other connected bots for fun or for glory. A simple chess bot framework in Python will be available through Github for everyone to be able to clone and build their chess engine in. It tracks board states for you and handles communication with the server, giving you all the freedom to implement the engine however you like. Example code will be provided to show you the basics and help you get started.

What you'll work on:

• Developing and optimizing your chess bot using Python.
• Designing and implementing algorithms for board evaluation and move selection.
• Experimenting with strategies like minimax, alpha-beta pruning, or other techniques.
• Creative problem-solving in a collaborative hackathon environment.

Agenda:

• 09:00 The Office opens.
• 09:30 The hackathon kicks off.
• 12:00 - 12:30 Lunch.
• 16:00 End of the hackathon and time for some drinks.

Lunch and snacks are provided. We love to close the day with ordering food and having dinner together. Let us know during the day if you would like to stay.

The address:
Asterweg 20-E3
1031 HN Amsterdam

Easy to reach by ferry behind Amsterdam Central Station, Ferry F3 to Buiksloterweg, goes every 5-10 minutes, takes less than 5 minutes to get to the Noord side. From there it is a 15 mins walk to the office. Parking around the office is payed till 19:00 and costs 1,60EUR/hour.

In case you have questions or need help with finding the office you can call our colleague Sigrid Broeders: +31 6 12 10 30 72.