I stunk at chess in college because I'd spend my time thinking about how to write a program to play chess rather than my next move. My favorite book was:

"Chess Skill in Man and Machine" https://www.amazon.com/Chess-machine-monographs-computer-sci...

which inspired parts of the computer strategy in the game Empire.

Chess playing programs have gotten so good these days, there's not really any percentage in writing one.

I bought a copy of "Chess Skill in Man and Machine"

https://www.amazon.com/Chess-machine-monographs-computer-sci...

back in the 70's, and it's descriptions of how a game could be mapped into a program was very illuminating to me. I still have a function in the DMD D compiler named evalu8() as tribute to that book.

Sadly, I lost my copy somewhere. I just ordered another from Amazon, I'm curious as to how it appears 4+ decades later.