opponentcolor

Opponent color is a term used in two-player strategy games to denote the color of the side controlled by the player's opponent. In chess, the two colors are white and black. The concept is used in both human play and computer implementations to distinguish between the player's perspective and that of the opponent. When it is your turn, the opponent color indicates the color you are facing on the board. In programming, storing both the player's color and the opponent's color simplifies move generation, evaluation, and user interface updates.

Common representations include strings "white" and "black", enumerations, or booleans (for example, true for white and false for black). Flipping the color is a common operation and can be implemented as a simple conditional or arithmetic expression, such as opponentColor = (color === WHITE) ? BLACK : WHITE, or opponentColor = 1 - color when colors are encoded as 0 and 1.

In chess engines, the term helps define the perspective of the search and evaluation. Some algorithms maintain separate scores for the player and the opponent, or switch the side to move by assigning the opponent color to the current mover. This facilitates functions that, for example, generate moves from the opponent’s point of view or evaluate threats relative to the opponent.

Usage in user interfaces includes indicating which color the opponent has, highlighting potential responses from the opponent’s color, or switching sides after a move. While widely used in chess programming, the exact mapping of color values can vary between libraries, so it is important to consult the documentation of a given implementation.