I’ve implemented bitboards instead of an array to store my board. At first I didn’t understand why bitboards were so good but after an amazing youtube video (here) I understand them and love them. I use them by having a 64 bit long integer (wow thats long) that represents the 8 by 8 board. Each bit can either be a 0 or 1 and represent whether there is a piece there or not. But you might think then how do you know what type of piece each 1 is? Thats why I use 12 bitboards (technically theres 1 more I added for extra efficiency but I don’t need that). Each of these 12 bitboards represents a type of piece in a specific colour (for example: white pawns and black pawns have 2 different bitboards). Then when I want to move pieces I create a position integer which is just 63 zeroes and a single 1 where the piece should be. I then invert this and use an AND statement so that all of the results for the AND are true where there are pieces apart from where I set the 1 at the start (though it is now a 0).