How does chess engines work ?

Question

I know there’s different depths but I don’t know what any of it means.

In: 0

Answer 1

Thank you to everyone who has supplied answers so far. I understand this type of approach discussed so far using an evaluation system. (check every legal move, evaluate every proprosed move for the value of the position – is it good or bad, and keep going, chasing good scoring lines).

But how do these new machine learning engines work? I read that AlphaZero taught itself? I guess I’m confused – wasn’t there some calculation that the sheer number of possible chess moves is an enormous number so how does that sort of system work?