Switching to bitboard board representation

Quoting Wikipedia:
"A bitboard, often used for boardgames such as chess, checkers and othello, is a specialization of the bitset data structure, where each bit represents a game position or state, designed for optimization of speed and/or memory or disk use in mass calculations. Bits in the same bitboard relate to each other in the rules of the game often forming a game position when taken together. Other bitboards are commonly used as masks to transform or answer queries about positions. The "game" may be any game-like system where information is tightly packed in a structured form with "rules" affecting how the individual units or pieces relate."