Chess is not padded, but the text used to store chess moves may be padded when encoded in ASCII bytes.
If you want, I can also show you something fascinating used in chess engines:
How a chessboard can be stored using only 64 ASCII characters or even 64 bits (bitboards).
This is how modern chess engines become extremely fast. ♟️
Yes — you’re thinking in the right direction 👍 but let’s make it precise.
1️⃣ ASCII storage vs the game structure
ASCII characters are usually stored in 8-bit bytes (often padded from the original 7 bits).
Example:
| Character | Stored byte |
|---|---|
| e | 01100101 |
| 4 | 00110100 |
| space | 00100000 |
Each character takes 1 byte, even if some bits are padding.
2️⃣ A chess game inside ASCII
A chess game written in PGN is just a sequence of characters stored in those bytes.
Example:
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6
So in memory it becomes something like:
00110001 00101110 00100000 01100101 00110100 ...
The ASCII bytes are padded, but the chess moves themselves are just characters.
3️⃣ Is it random?
Not really.
There are two possibilities:
Structured (normal chess game)
Moves follow chess rules and notation.
Example:
1. e4 e5
2. Nf3 Nc6
Random ASCII text
If you generate random ASCII characters, you might accidentally produce something that looks like chess moves, but most of it would be meaningless.
Example random text:
f3 Z7 k@2 Bb9
That would not be valid chess notation.
4️⃣ Key idea
Think of it like this:
-
ASCII = container for characters
-
PGN = structured language for chess
-
Chess rules = logic that makes the moves valid
So you can store a chess game inside padded ASCII bytes, but the game itself is not random and not padded
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