01 / The original idea
Your move, Mr Turing.
Play a reconstruction of Turing and Champernowne’s 1948 chess algorithm—and follow the calculation behind each move.
The players
Move record
Select a piece, then a highlighted square. Keyboard: Tab enters or leaves the board; arrows explore squares; Enter or Space selects; Escape cancels selection. Home/End move to the ends of a rank.
Playing tips and special moves
Castling: select your king, then g1 or c1 (White), or g8 or c8 (Black). The rook moves automatically. Castling is unavailable if the king or relevant rook has moved, pieces block the route, or the king would start in, pass through or finish in check.
En passant: when available, select the pawn and its highlighted diagonal destination. The captured pawn is removed automatically. This opportunity lasts for the immediately following move only.
Promotion: reaching the last rank opens a choice of queen, rook, bishop or knight.
Save and continue: Save PGN downloads your move record. Load PGN reopens it later; the site does not automatically save your game. Undo turn lets you take back your move and Turochamp’s reply.
An algorithm ahead of its implementation.
Meet Turing and Champernowne, and the challenge of bringing their instructions to life.
Explore →1952 / THE RECORDED GAMEFollow the Glennie game.
Replay the surviving game score, with short explanations at key moments.
Explore →1997 / THE REMATCHThe world champion and Deep Blue.
Replay all six games of the match, with short commentary.
Explore →A game, and a historical experiment.
Turochamp turns chess judgement into explicit rules: count material, look ahead, and consider activity, safety and development. This independent JavaScript reconstruction uses those ideas without an opening book or a modern neural-network evaluation.
It supports normal chess moves, including castling, en passant and all four promotion choices. It is deliberately limited in its search and can make poor decisions. Winning against it is part of the experience; understanding its choices is the other part.
Historical fidelity: this is a documented interpretation of the surviving descriptions, with bounded tactical search for browser use. It is not an original executable or a claim to reproduce every move Turing calculated. Read the implementation notes for exact conventions.