Ok i've got a game of chess in VB, but its only P v P... I want to allow the user to play against the computer, but i have no idea how to set the logic up for the computer... How do you determine the best move that can be made?

If only Wikipedia was a credible reference, I'd use it in all my essays [smile]

I have learned quite a bit on this topic by referring to:
https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/

There are also a number of readily available open-source engines.

If you want to focus on the algorithms and not the GUI, I'd recommend taking a look at the Xboard protocol + Winboard.

ok thanks for the info guys :)

I suggest "Computer gamesmanship: The complete guide to creating and structuring intelligent games programs" by David N. L Levy (ISBN-13: 978-0671495329). It's old, but the principles still work and it can be found cheap (!) on Amazon.com.

Chess AI is very complex, very challenging, and also very rewarding. Many of us who take the plunge in to computer chess end up 'swimming in the deep-end' for at least a couple of years. :)

If you want a taste, start writing Tic-Tac-Toe using a game tree via MinMax. Once that's working, make it work for Chess and add AlphaBeta pruning and then Killer Move heuristics. Hopefully by that point you'll be hooked, and back here asking questions about hash tables, iterative deepening, and null-moves. :)

actually i completed this game some time ago, it was fairly difficult but by no means took years :D i did it all with my own logic and a little help with the checkmate logic from here ;)

if anyone wants any help they can ask me now :)

When you say you did it with your own logic, what do you mean? Did you use a gametree?