Hey, you got to live your dream… Keep going!
My limited understanding with chess programs is that since the opening moves are very well understood, most programs use a fixed series of moves for the opening and After those moves are all played out they then use AI later (maybe exhaustive search of some sort?) to determine move into the mid and end game.
I just googled it and I believe they’re called gambits. And I’m sure there are aggressive, moderate, and conservative ones. And of course different ones for each color!
So I believe the standard approach is to have the AI choose a gambit… Depending on lots of parameters like how advanced your opponent is and whether they’re playing white or black or whatever. Then the computer player would simply move down the gambit and make each move on his turn until all the moves have been made (or I guess until the board state gets too weird to keep pursuing the gambit). And then it would switch to a more generalized AI that would use… I don’t know maybe some sort of depth first move analysis tree? And that would be used from the mid game through the end. Or maybe near endgame there are standard moves… not sure.
Anyway, that technique would give you a leg up on How the AI would play though it’s still going to be a very complex undertaking.