The ChessAIThon project (2025-1-ES01-KA220-VET-000354329) is co-funded by the European Union. The views and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Spanish Service for the Internationalisation of Education (SEPIE). Neither the European Union nor the National Agency SEPIE can be held responsible for them.

Chess data: formats structures and dataset files, control version

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Part 2

Algorithmic Thinking and Conversion

The key learning objective is the algorithmic thinking required for conversion. Students will use either the Python Chess library (chess.Board(fen_string)) or Chess.js (chess.load(fen_string)) to instantly parse a FEN into a usable digital board state.

For a deeper dive into computer science fundamentals, task VET students with manual conversion algorithms using no libraries. This approach is invaluable for teaching matrix management, where an 8x8 array must be correctly populated from a FEN string using:

  • String splitting
  • Loops
  • Conditionals