Kudoa for this, but it feels like there should be a more direct way? I mean, he first invented basically a general-purpose execution platform. That in itself is cool, but the fact that it then can execute a chess program is not actually that surprising.
What about directly encoding the rules of the game plus some basic strategy?
It's not a general-purpose execution program. It only executes bounded loops, not free loops.
In chess the word "strategy" is used for something different than "tactics". My tester can decide to sacrifice a knight to get pawns the way he wants (strategy), my chess program on the other hand is better at tactics (looking ahead a few moves and setting up a fork https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(chess)
Lasker's famous quote is "better a bad plan than no plan at all" but chess engines play superhuman chess with superior tactics and no strategy. There's nothing like the "basic strategy" in blackjack, rather you can make a very strong chess program by the exhaustive search he's using, but you have to optimize it a lot.
What about directly encoding the rules of the game plus some basic strategy?