Developers create chess program from just 487 bytes

Programmers say they have written the most compact chess program ever. The BootChess code consists of only 487 bytes, whereas the previous record holder needed 672 bytes to get a working chess program.

In 1983 David Horne released 1K ZX Chess. This chess software used 672 bytes of RAM on a Sinclair ZX81 home computer and held the record for decades as the most compact chess software ever written. But the record has since been broken: programmers from the group Red Sector Inc., active in the demo scene, have written BootChess, a chess computer whose code has 487 bytes.

The BootChess code is written in assembler. BootChess is a multiplatform game, can boot from a boot sector and presents the user with an extremely bare chess board. The player must move the pawns on the board using tapped commands. However, some developers who have tried BootChess argue that the chess software still contains several flaws that make it not a fully and correctly functioning chess software.