Touch-move rule move or capture the first of the pieces that they touched. If it cannot be determined whether he touched his own piece or the opponent's piece first, it is assumed that he touched his own piece first. If a player touches more than one piece, he must move or capture the first piece that can be legally moved or captured. An exception to that is an attempted illegal castling; in that case the king must be moved if possible, but otherwise there is no requirement to move the rook. When castling, the king must be the first piece touched. If
Null-move heuristic of chess positions where employing the null-move heuristic can result in severe tactical blunders. In these "zugzwang" (German for "forced to move") positions, the player whose turn it is to move has only bad moves as their legal choices, and so would actually be better off if allowed to forfeit the right to move. In these positions, the null-move heuristic may produce a cutoff where a full search would not have found one, causing the program to assume the position is very good for a side when it may in fact be very bad for them. To avoid using the