How do I model a chessboard when programming a computer to play chess?

Question

What data structures would you use to represent a chessboard for a computer chess program?

Answer 1

Using a bitboard would be an efficient way to represent the state of a chess board. The basic idea is that you use 64bit bitsets to represent each of the squares on the board, where first bit usually represents A1 (the lower left square), and the 64th bit represents H8 (the diagonally opposite square). Each type of piece (pawn, king, etc.) of each player (black, white) gets its own bit board and all 12 of these boards makes up the game state. For more information check out this Wikipedia article.