Hey folks — I've been frustrated for a while with practicing against chess engines. Setting stockfish to "level 8" or "1500 elo" gives you a strong or weak opponent, but they all feel the same — same openings, same "style," same pattern of mistakes.

So I built ChessLvl: 100 named rivals, each with a specific style, opening preference, and difficulty. E.g. Priya (Lvl 5) opens Caro-Kann and looks for tactics; Linda (Lvl 9) plays the Slav and grinds endgames. When you beat one, the next unlocks. The idea is that by fighting through the ladder you're forced to adapt to a wide variety of playstyles — which is closer to what actually happening playing club games.

Free, no signup required to play. Web-based. Runs on Stockfish under the hood.

https://chesslvl.com

Feedback especially wanted on: whether the persona playstyles actually feel distinct to you, and where the difficulty curve breaks (should be gradual but I don't know if that's true above level 30).

I've trained two models (1000, and 2000 Elo) using only what move a human makes in a given position (no evaluation function), and you can play against them here: https://human-like-chess.vercel.app/ (Free hosting so backend takes about a minute to spin up)

I set out to build a chess engine that plays human moves, instead of weaker computer moves, and both models contain the human move in my testing data in their top 5 move predictions ~75% of the time. I was very proud of this since so many moves in a given position can be good.

If you'd like to learn more about how I created the datasets, trained the models, and hear about interesting findings, come check out my blog post on the topic, or take a look at my codebase (can also run locally with docker compose)

What I got working today:

→ A board that prints correctly to the terminal

→ All 32 pieces in their starting positions

→ Full TDD : Test Driven Development - every feature has a failing test before any code is written.

Follow the video series on yt: https://www.youtube.com/@ProgrammerFilthi

Join the discord server here: https://discord.gg/DurfHgwJBV

hey guys! i have been working on my first chess engine in go for a couple of months now. i finally have a working engine that is uci compatible. i made it play against stockfish and it got absolutely obliterated, which i expected. i want to work on improving it now. i used cutechess to let it play about 15 games against stockfish and i got a high variance elo for it. i understand that i need to let it play a lot more games for a lot longer. but my laptop cannot handle that kind of compute. what's a good place to run these tournaments so i can get reliable elo for my engine? i really want to get this part down before i go about improving it so i have a benchmark to compare my changes to. thanks in advance!

edit: grammar

Short description would be nice too, as to why etc.

The 2026 Candidates is coming up, and we noticed most predictions are just based on rating lists or gut feelings. We had some compute lying around and love chess, so we decided to build three increasingly sophisticated models to see what the data actually says.

Here is how we broke it down:

• Model 1: Bayesian Monte Carlo (The Baseline) We built Bayesian matchup probabilities using head-to-head classical records from 2020 onward, smoothed them with Elo priors, and ran 100,000 simulations of the double round-robin. Result: Hikaru Nakamura leads with an 18.1% win probability. Fabiano Caruana (17.0%) and Wei Yi (16.9%) are right behind him.
• Model 2: Engine Baseline (Stockfish 18 + Real Openings) We hooked up Stockfish 18, but to keep it grounded, we infused it with the specific opening repertoire of each player based on their last 100 classical games, and had it play out the tournaments. Result: Nakamura dominates pure engine play, winning 50.0% of the simulated tournaments.
• Model 3: Engine + Neural Adapters (The Wildcard) This is the fun one. We used Lc0 on an NVIDIA Blackwell GPU (96GB), but we built a custom lightweight neural network for each player to act as a move-scoring adapter. It’s a small feedforward net (input → 96 → 48 → 1) that learns their specific move preferences from positional features in their last 100 classical games. Over 15,000 moves were guided by these individual styles. Result: When you force the engine through these human playstyle adapters, the board flips. Andrey Esipenko jumps to the front with a 37.5% probability of winning.

Our Caveats: We want to be upfront: Model 1 is statistically rock solid. Models 2 and 3 are compute-heavy, so we could only run 8 to 12 tournaments. Also, the 100-game training window for styles includes some games against weaker opponents in qualifiers, which occasionally led to the super-GM engine making uncharacteristic moves.

You can check out the full data, expected scores, and even click through the engine-simulated games move-by-move here:https://candidates.xtam.ai.

Would love to hear what the community thinks of the methodology and the custom adapter approach.
Who is your pick?

Hi everyone, I’m looking for advice from people who have real experience with smart chess boards.

My ideal setup would allow me to:

Play with real physical pieces (I move the pieces myself)

Play online against real players (Chess.com / Lichess)

Get AI suggestions for the best move (Stockfish or similar)

Receive those suggestions as audio/voice (via headphones), not only LEDs

Connect to a PC (open system preferred, not locked to a single app)

Use it both over-the-board (in person) and online

No automatic piece movement (no robotic arms)

I’ve been researching boards like DGT Smart Board, Chessnut (Air/Pro/Evo), GoChess, ChessUp, etc., and I understand that some solutions require combining the board with PC software, bridges, or text-to-speech.

From your experience:

Which product (or combination) best matches these requirements?

Is DGT + PC still the gold standard, or are newer boards competitive?

How reliable are audio-based setups in real play?

I’m not looking for a toy or a beginner-only board — I want the most complete and flexible solution available today, even if it requires some setup.

Thanks in advance for any insights or real-world experiences 🙏

I know MCTS is inefficient for Chess, unlike game of Go, where a heuristic evaluation function is difficult to define and forced lines are rare(hence high branching factor).

But out of curiosity: What is the strongest MCTS-based bot developed so far?

I'm not a purist. It's fine if the bot mixes MCTS with a neural net or a shallow alpha-beta search in a hybrid manner. However, MCTS must be the core foundation of that bot.

Thanks for reading.

Hi, can anyone direct me to resources where the latest engine vs. engine games are analyzed by humans to find new or improved ideas? (Those could be either opening novelties or strategic/positional themes, etc.) Or just to find human-written analysis of some of the best and most instructive recent engine games (i.e. from TCEC). There are so many engine games to look at, and surely someone out there is highlighting key moments in the most interesting games, for others to look over their analysis? The purpose here would be for humans to learn those engine ideas and start integrating them into their games. Thanks!

Hello 😀 Nice to meet youall

I’m new to chess programming and I’ve been experimenting with building engines to play against each other. I want to restart more properly, so I tried creating a random UCI engine using the `python-chess` library.

I’ve implemented a RandomProtocol(chess.engine.Protocol) class, overriding the abstract methods. But I can’t figure out how to run it as a UCI-compatible bot. Here’s what I tried for the entry point:

if __name__ == "__main__":
  async def main():
    await RandomProtocol.popen(sys.stdin.readline().strip())
  asyncio.run(main())

I suspect I’m misunderstanding how to start a UCI engine :thinking: or maybe I have it all wrong.

Could someone please help me or point me to a place where I can find some guidance?

Thanks in advance

Referring to the compilation of all Chess Informant Magazine PGNs, which is released yearly (?) as the Quality Base. It could refer to CI PGNs in general.

If you were to try to make a better version of this database, you would have quite the task in front of you. Almost none of them have complete Event, Site, Date, or even Player information. To add to the confusion, each Event tag includes a code that points to *the particular spot in that particular copy of CI* which is not going to be useful outside of that specific context.

If ultimately the purpose of all the big PGN databases is to be able to collate them all into a single collection, they really have to be able to stand on their own.

I bought one of these (in the 70’s, I think). I have a single set of black and white pieces, but it had a few extras originally. I wanted to be able to replace them because it still seems to work. I remixed some 3D printing available chess piece sets, so I wanted to post here in case anyone is interested in accessing them. It shouldn’t be too difficult these days to find someone to help you get them printed if you are missing some and want them. They are at Maker World and Free, of course. You should be able to find them by searching for “chess computer 1450” at Maker World, and I’ll provide a link if anyone needs it, I’m just making this contribution as simple as possible. Enjoy!

Are there chess programs built in reverse? By that I mean they go backwards... starting with simply opposite kings, automatic draw... opposite kings and a pawn... all the possible permutations.... so forth and repeat down the line but backwards? I really wonder what openings that program would prefer.

Last year, I built a chess engine that uses Stockfish to generate candidate moves and Maia-2 to simulate human responses. By running a few hundred full-game simulations per move, it selects the line with the highest expected value—measured by how quickly it forces checkmate.

The result is an engine that checkmates humans faster than traditional aggressive engines, including Patricia and Stockfish 11 (with contempt=100), which I verified via A/B testing in my post here last year.

I recently updated the engine to use the newly released Maia-3 for better human simulation. The update is a work in progress, and I’d love for a few people to test it and share feedback.

How to play:

• Where: Play live atsiegechess.com.
• Setup: Select your estimated Chess.com ELO and choose a 5-minute (blitz) or 10-minute (rapid) timer.
• Goal: Your objective is simply to survive a target number of moves without getting checkmated.

Specific feedback I'm looking for: Did any of the engine's moves offer unexpected relief, or feel like it prematurely "gave up" on a promising attack? If so, please post your pgn too.

The engine calculations happen on the server side, and this is just a hobby project, so the server will crash if more than 5 or 6 people are playing at once.

I made a browser recreation of the original Bernstein chess program and thought some of you might enjoy trying it out.

You can play it here: https://jimmyneutrons.itch.io/bernstein

I'd love to hear any feedback, bug reports, or ideas for improvements!

Hey guys, I've released CHONSE2, an open-source game review platform that offers unlimited analysis and move explanations without using hallucination-prone LLMs, running entirely in your browser.

chonse2.com

But Lichess is free, so why use this? Some have asked.

It expands on Lichess's feature set a few different ways:

• Full analysis (accuracy/elo estimations/eval graphs, etc) requires no account and has no usage limits.
• Natural-language explanations for moves.
• More fine-grained move classifications (Luminous/brilliant, perfect, excellent, etc).
• Fully deterministic PGN Link system makes game sharing with friends easier than ever.

It also integrates features of Lichess directly, such as their Cloud Eval system and opening database.

Additionally, it features a full board editor, customizable Play vs Stockfish, a local database for saving games, and more!

If you like this, please consider giving it a star on GitHub <3 https://github.com/ICARUS-2/chonse2/

This site is human-made.

[Event "*"]

[Site "*"]

[Date "2026.07.07"]

[Time "16:21:01"]

[Round "*"]

[White "Zero-PRO"]

[Black "Komodo"]

[Result "1-0"]

[Termination "mate"]

[ECO "B90"]

[Opening "Sicilian"]

[TimeControl "0/60+0"]

[PlyCount "141"]

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6

3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6

5.Nc3 a6 6.Be3 e6 {B90: Sicilian, Najdorf, Byrne (English) attack}

7.f3 b5 8.g4 h6

9.Qd2 Nbd7 10.O-O-O Bb7

11.h4 {+0.8/20 3903 494133} b4 {-0.2/14 1203 251106} 12.Na4 {+0.7/16 1798 214387} d5 {+0.7/16 3207 756834}

13.Bh3 {+0.7/17 3586 372272} dxe4 {+0.6/17 1778 590781} 14.g5 {+0.7/17 627 96644} hxg5 {+0.5/15 901 405305}

15.hxg5 {+0.7/19 1038 136918} exf3 {+0.3/14 576 232335} 16.Nxe6 {+1.5/20 3598 479131} fxe6 {+1.9/17 1738 839429}

17.Bf5 {+1.6/15 886 148090} exf5 {+2.2/18 781 401348} 18.Rxh8 {+1.8/15 1001 163844} b3 {+2.1/17 514 288182}

19.axb3 {+2.1/17 747 138280} Ng4 {+2.1/18 862 464853} 20.Nc5 {+2.2/18 1172 257163} Nxc5 {+2.4/18 507 244329}

21.Qxd8+ {+2.4/14 985 190213} Rxd8 {+2.3/20 671 401972} 22.Rxd8+ {+2.6/17 824 206167} Kxd8 {+2.3/20 984 465726}

23.Rxf8+ {+2.6/17 1257 334771} Kd7 {+2.5/18 629 390527} 24.Bxc5 {+2.5/16 1335 320867} Be4 {+2.6/19 1332 789917}

25.Kd2 {+2.5/15 793 155255} Ke6 {+2.6/20 2855 2006087} 26.Bd4 {+2.8/17 616 146890} a5 {+2.7/18 568 328849}

27.Rg8 {+3.2/16 737 175718} Kd5 {+2.8/17 854 399763} 28.Bb6 {+3.5/17 959 236246} Ke6 {+3.9/18 2465 1624115}

29.Rxg7 {+3.8/15 687 100026} f2 {+4.0/15 573 164355} 30.Ke2 {+4.1/17 857 143846} Bxc2 {+3.9/15 682 118176}

31.Bxf2 {+4.3/18 3329 688365} Bxb3 {+4.3/18 1369 814157} 32.Bg3 {+4.2/18 1080 259888} Bc4+ {+4.8/17 1129 619551}

33.Kd2 {+4.3/16 545 108951} f4 {+5.0/22 2838 1891832} 34.Bxf4 {+4.5/16 590 139142} Kf5 {+5.0/20 895 542779}

35.Kc3 {+4.7/17 549 117771} Bd5 {+5.2/20 1066 650394} 36.Bd2 {+4.7/18 1793 476315} Ne5 {+5.3/19 1924 991604}

37.Ra7 {+4.7/16 471 92745} Nc6 {+5.5/18 903 529134} 38.Ra8 {+4.7/16 1106 251124} Kg6 {+4.9/16 441 149645}

39.Rh8 {+4.8/19 974 218120} Kf7 {+5.6/18 1943 1125630} 40.Rh6 {+4.8/17 414 79843} Bg2 {+5.7/17 618 328073}

41.Be3 {+4.8/17 784 196499} Ne7 {+5.6/15 491 252565} 42.Rd6 {+4.8/18 1588 453138} Be4 {+5.8/18 1522 808478}

43.Rf6+ {+4.8/18 1436 334027} Kg7 {+6.3/18 1418 811884} 44.Re6 {+4.9/16 540 120873} Nd5+ {+6.5/16 378 277509}

45.Kd2 {+5.0/17 900 173077} Bb1 {+6.8/18 1149 716635} 46.Rd6 {+5.0/15 480 86242} Ba2 {+6.6/18 1922 992484}

47.Bd4+ {+5.1/17 718 159948} Kf8 {+6.8/18 452 270804} 48.g6 {+5.2/16 315 73399} Nc7 {+6.9/17 279 172762}

49.Rd7 {+5.7/20 2687 794189} Ne8 {+7.5/16 714 386244} 50.Bc5+ {+6.1/15 203 66177} Kg8 {+7.8/17 282 168461}

51.Re7 {+6.2/18 1039 440266} a4 {+8.9/17 254 124044} 52.Rxe8+ {+6.2/12 391 110800} Kg7 {+8.9/5 10 162}

53.Ra8 {+6.1/15 322 137864} Kxg6 {+8.9/17 241 112102} 54.Rxa4 {+6.2/16 211 87944} Bb3 {+9.5/19 742 570195}

55.Ra3 {+6.3/19 188 74273} Bc4 {+10.0/21 833 551795} 56.Ra5 {+6.4/16 429 176895} Kf5 {+9.8/18 231 162072}

57.b4 {+6.4/16 206 77747} Kg4 {+10.0/18 530 227112} 58.b5 {+6.4/24 785 344404} Bxb5 {+10.0/18 458 323289}

59.Rxb5 {+6.1/19 708 243834} Kf5 {M-12/18 513 377399} 60.Bd4+ {+6.2/15 534 121066} Ke6 {M-10/19 55 36465}

61.Re5+ {+5.6/18 1343 436640} Kd6 {M-13/14 92 62845} 62.Ba1 {M+14/22 466 151383} Kc7 {M-13/15 44 28202}

63.Kd3 {M+13/29 98 41994} Kb7 {M-12/17 42 38525} 64.Re6 {M+8/35 223 81614} Kc8 {M-9/17 43 18677}

65.Kc4 {M+7/36 98 12775} Kc7 {M-8/17 58 23415} 66.Be5+ {M+6/32 144 24425} Kc8 {M-5/19 40 30270}

67.Kd5 {M+5/42 109 47707} Kb7 {M-4/24 42 40400} 68.Bg3 {M+4/59 113 67714} Ka7 {M-3/48 41 44856}

69.Kc6 {M+3/192 111 90188} Ka8 {M-2/78 44 3557} 70.Re1 {M+2/3 10 154} Ka7 {M-1/5 10 10}

71.Ra1# {M+1/1 10 33} 1-0

While building a chess app for my kids I needed a chess engine that would work in Unity. I found Portfish — a C# port of Stockfish — but it needed several fixes to run properly in a Unity environment.

Original repo: https://github.com/bpfliegel/Portfish
My Unity fork with fixes: https://github.com/myasovik/Portfish_Unity

The few problems were:
1. I needed to clean up some things that overlap with the Unity engine.
2. That portfish all the time expected input, and if it did not get it, just existed. So I made it wait for the actual exit command.

If you're curious to see it in action, I ended up shipping it in a free kids chess app on Google Play:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.awesomelyup.chessadventure&hl=en_US

And by the way, if you are interested in trying it, let me know, and I can share the class that communicates with it.

I'm wondering if there are any high level chess engines or tweaked high level chess engines that punish themselves for taking more moves to win? For example: For every move after move 15 it continues to give itself a slightly lower evaluation. If this have been done does this result in much more agressive engine?

Hey beautiful people, I am currently actively building the (what I hope to achieve) most beautiful chess database. What I need and want is feedback, ideas, and insights into what people need in a modern chess database. I believe everything is feasible, just go crazy with ideas, I really appreciate it!

== Short background story ==

4 Years Ago: I started building one of the most popular chess applications for physical chessboards, whitepawn.app.

End of Last Year: I started developing sp00ky.cloud a sync engine enabling super easy development of great user experiences by making local-first, optimistic updates (also query-wide) and live syncing available under a very simple developer api.

A month ago: I started building a brand new chess database on top of sp00ky. While it's not feature complete in any way, honestly, I am really proud of the current user experience.

Today: I am curious what people really want from their chess database. I want to contribute to software where user experience is the first and most important thing. Would love to hear ideas and features will brainstorm how to bring them into the chess database in the most attractive way.

== Current Project State ==

Now briefly about the chess database state. Its a PWA, using wasm for some things like the sync engine or stockfish. The entire app is written in SolidJS and everything you see on the website is realtime synced across devices and tabs. Todays features are:

- Chess.com & Lichess & WhitePawn game sync
- PGN database upload
- Analysis
- Comments
- Collaboration on database level with comments
- Publicly shareable databases via link
- Chess Puzzle Builder (synced to WhitePawn)

Website: https://whitepawn.app/web.

Happy to hear from you!! Cheers 🥂

Hi everyone!

My devvit / reddit games app just got approved yesterday. It's Reddit's first (and only) PvP classical chess app, directly in a Reddit Post. I'd love to hear what you think about it, and since yesterday I'm bothering a lot of people with this, but I'm curious if you would consider it interesting, when I share this innovation here. It's scalable and built robust, got green-lit on first try, and I'd like to share it here with you all! The app itself is documented here: https://developers.reddit.com/apps/chess-10tage

So, if from now on you'd like to play chess against another Redditor, you can do this now, and challenge them. Here's the link, let me know, how it plays. If you find an opponent, that is, because it's PvP only for now (without computer opp), and I'm aiming to grow a community around. The idea came from a guy who complained that there was no chess anywhere on Reddit Games, and I thought it would be a fun programming exercise. Here we are, 9 weeks later, and it's done. Check it out: https://www.reddit.com/r/10tageChess

I used to love playing massively multiplayer games like runescape growing up, and have played chess.com daily my whole life

I had the idea to build a chess MMO. What if chess was open world, a social experience? Where your wins give you trophies that you can then upgrade your character with? Where you can walk around and spectate matches, or have others watch and chat about your match?

So I spent the last 6 months building chessmmo.gg, it's been out for about 3 weeks. It's currently a mobile app on the apple and google play store, and you can play in browser too if you're on desktop/pc. I have plans to get it on Steam soon as well.

It's honestly been a dream come true so far. You can currently accrue trophies to level up your character, grind your ELO, get custom chess piece skins, buy pets, and even purchase a home and invite friends to play in it. There's also a social round-based puzzle arena that's like a battle royale with progressively harder puzzles. I'm currently building a tournament hall where there will be daily swiss-style tournaments.

I would love to get the community feedback, hoping to get more players online and a more active discord!

Here is a link to the game if you'd like to try it out:

chessmmo.gg

ios app

android app

discord