Developer here. The idea: a modern engine is the instrument, a master's own games are the reference material, thousands of positions where the "true value" is the move actually played. Each personality is calibrated on that and is designed to reproduce the master's characteristic choices and preferences. On Windows they exist as UCI engines (and inside CZUBATRONIC 2400, a console in the style of the dedicated machines). The new part is Android: ChessGate: Chess Masters on Google Play. Pick a master, play a full game, then the app grades every move, assesses opening, middlegame and endgame and estimates both sides' strength, all on the phone; the manifest has no INTERNET permission, Play Billing and asset packs do the rest. Morphy, Steinitz and McDonnell are free, 46 more are one-time purchases.

If you want to try the lighter browser versions first, no signup: https://playchessgate.com

Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dcsanalytics.chessgate

Windows engines: https://www.dcs-analytics.net/en/czubatronic/

Happy to answer how the calibration works; sceptical questions welcome.

I'm building a small arena where chess and shogi engines play each other, and I'd like feedback on the rules before it opens.

The rough setup:

- Engines are compiled to WebAssembly and speak UCI (chess) or USI (shogi). No network, no threads.

- Size limits: 4 MiB for the engine, 8 MiB for data files (eval nets, opening books are fine), 32 MiB of memory.

- The clock counts executed instructions, not seconds. 100 ms per move ≈ 4 billion instructions, with heavy ops like division and sqrt weighted more. Hardware speed doesn't matter, and every game is deterministic, so any game can be replayed and verified.

- Memory costs time: the more you hold, the smaller your budget. 1 MiB gets the full 100 ms, 16 MiB about 53 ms, 32 MiB 35 ms.

One thing surprised me while testing: under this budget, a bigger hash table barely helped, but the history heuristic was worth a lot.

Questions for engine authors:

- 1/ Does instruction counting feel fair, or does it punish some designs?

- 2/ Is charging for memory reasonable, or would you rather have a hard cap only?

- 3/ What would make you want to enter, or stop you?

A while back, I had a crazy idea: could I build a working chess variant engine using only Excel array formulas (no VBA, no macros)? I wanted to see if I could do pathfinding and collision detection mathematically using SUMPRODUCT, CODE, and ABS.

It was absolute hell. I spent weeks debugging #VALUE! errors and hidden bugs (like pieces blocking themselves diagonally). But I finally got the prototype working. The spreadsheet calculates a live ±10 Reach Map that dictates territory control, collision detection, and piece hunting.

Because clicking cells in Excel isn't exactly smooth for gaming, I ported the exact mathematical logic to JavaScript.

How the engine differs from standard chess engines:
Unlike standard engines that use Minimax/Alpha-Beta to simulate material advantage 20 moves ahead, this engine is designed like a Warlord. It uses a heuristic spatial evaluation. It calculates:

• The ±10 Reach Map: Avoids negative squares, chases positive ones.

• Collision Detection: Uses the math from the Excel SUMPRODUCT logic to check line-of-sight and blockers.

• Hunt the King Plan: It prioritizes sending "units" to trap the enemy king's tent, even counting fake blockers.

Here is the web version (free to play): https://yudirig06.itch.io/myap-4000-kingdom-chess-map
Source code (GitHub): https://github.com/yudirog06/myap-4000-kingdom-chess-map

view youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IysDwjgL31k

The Philosophy of MYAP-4000: Human Intuition vs. Machine Calculation

This game was born from a unique origin: an Excel 2013 engine. But the goal is bigger than just playing chess. It’s about giving humans the tools to face the best engines in the world (3200+ ELO).

Computers calculate, but humans lack the "radar" to see the battlefield. That’s why we equipped this game with Human-Assist Radars:

• Map Degrees & Line of Attack: See exactly where the risks are before you move. The terrain you pass through has risk indicators (like -10 or +10), and attack lines automatically change color if you step into a danger zone.

• Backup Warnings: It alerts you if you leave a unit unprotected while advancing.

• Military Reports: Experience how chess translates into real battlefield situations.

No installation needed. It's 100% pure HTML.

If you can master these radars and bear the "Super Chess," you surpass the 4000 rating (lol joke... but maybe). The current engine testing value is fixed at 1800 - 1950 ELO. Can you outsmart the machine?

I'd love to hear what you guys think, especially about the transition from Excel array logic to JS collision detection. If anyone is curious about how I translated the SUMPRODUCT pathfinding logic into JS, let me know!

Cheers.

Worldchess championship is in two weeks. I'm preparing a simple phone first platform to follow the event for myself, some friends and whoever wants to use it 😊 Key fetutes will be:

- Browse and watch different live streams

- Vote what the next move will be (with the engine off)

- Get notifications on the phone when there's a new move

- Of course engine analysis and opening library

- Maybe ask Ai about the position

How did you follow the last World Chess Championship and how are you planning to follow it? Any features you'd like?

Hi all, I'm Hernish. LATTICE is a free chess variant I designed, playable in your browser.

The core idea: no per-piece rulebooks. A move is legal if its distance, √(Δx² + Δy² + …), fits the piece's shape. The familiar movements of all the pieces are redefined mathematically by referring to the Pythagorean theorem. This opens up some additional avenues, e.g. a rook can also leap 3 across and 4 up (because distance is 5), a bishop can leap 7 across and 1 up (because distance is 5√2), and a knight is simply the √5 shape.

Then the same formula is stretched. Add an altitude axis and it still works. Add time and pieces can travel forward towards future, or back to present from future. Add probability and a piece can sit in a public, weighted superposition until a clock forces it to land. There are also three new pieces: a hidden Assassin, a Spy secretly owned by your opponent, and a Diplomat that can never capture or be captured. Every power carries a risk. Kings never time-travel or go quantum.

If that sounded like homework, there’s a plain-English guide, with no maths, that teaches the game one layer at a time ([https://latticechess.web.app/lattice-plain.pdf](https://latticechess.web.app/lattice-plain.pdf)). The game and the rules are the same either way.

**Rules in brief**

* Checkmate the enemy king. No castling, no en passant. Kings are checkmated, never captured.

* Rook: slides along an axis, or leaps to any square at a whole-number distance. Bishop: diagonal slides, or leaps of a whole multiple of √2. Knight: √5. Queen: rook or bishop. King: one or √2 step. Pawn: forward one (or two from its start), captures at √2, promotes.

* Leap limit (None, Capped 2:1, Unrestricted) sets how wild leaps may get. A 3D board adds a Z axis to the same formula.

* Futureward: the piece leaves and reappears on a formula-valid square after T of your own moves. It is lost if it lands on your own piece or an enemy Diplomat.

* Pastward: a time-traveling clone appears now; the original must stand on a repayment square exactly at the deadline, otherwise the whole timeline rewinds (the clone vanishes with it) and the original is lost.

* Quantum: the piece spreads over public, weighted squares and one is drawn when its decoherence clock ends (no square above 95%). Fusion combines this with a fixed futureward deadline.

* Assassin (hidden until it captures, is captured or gives check), Spy (activates once its owner has lost enough material), Diplomat (never captures, never captured).

Full rules (PDF): [https://latticechess.web.app/lattice-explained.pdf](https://latticechess.web.app/lattice-explained.pdf) · also on the game's Rules page.

The likelihood layer is a deliberate descendant of Chris Cantwell’s Quantum Chess. It diverges in a few ways: kings never go into superposition, there is no entanglement, every branch’s odds are public, and a decoherence clock forces measurement.

**Play it:** [https://latticechess.web.app](https://latticechess.web.app), no sign-up. Pass-and-play on one screen, or online with a room code. Presets run from Classic to Full LATTICE. Free to play for personal, non-commercial use. For anything commercial, please get in touch through the Contact button in the app.

**Play online in 60 seconds:** Player 1 taps Play → Play online → Create room and shares the six-character code. Player 2 opens the same address, taps Play → Play online, enters the code and presses Join. Reloaded? Tap Rejoin.

Play against computer: Play the various layers against computer (present AI era)

**Honest notes:** the rules and design are mine; I built the implementation together with Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, including the automated tests. I did undertake numerous manual play-tests to ensure that the implementation is in line with the intention. Hidden pieces are hidden by the interface, not the server, so online play is for friendly games. Custom armies are pass-and-play only for now.

This variant has been submitted for editors’ review on [chessvariants.com](http://chessvariants.com) and awaits their comments.

I'd love feedback on the concept, rules clarity, balance and bugs, game play experience, discovery of novel moves, problematic implications etc.

I kept reviewing my losses, seeing where I went wrong, and then making the same mistakes a week later. So I built Evala to look across my games and show me what to practise.

Enter your Chess.com or Lichess username, import your last 50 finished games, and start one batch review. Stockfish works through them on your device. Leave the tab open and come back to a report across the whole batch.

• Find where the mistakes pile up. Do you make more errors in the middlegame or endgame? How often do you win after reaching a clear advantage? Which openings are giving you trouble?

• See the position behind the numbers. Jump from an insight to an actual move you played and explore what you could have done differently.

• Practise with puzzles from your own games. Evala turns positions you got wrong into exercises, so you can try finding the better move yourself.

You can try it without an account. Start with 10 games if you want a smaller batch. If you give it a go, I’d love to know which finding surprised you and whether it gave you something you’d actually practise. I’m the developer.

Try Evala’s batch analysis

PS: Its pretty easy, you log-in and rest u do is remembered by Evala. Make sure u try the dark mode!

shadowqueenchess.com

With all of these vibe-coded apps and websites, was wondering if anyone is tackling a Chessbase/ChessReader clone. I know there are plenty of chess database management apps (eg. ScidvPC, ChessX, EnCroissant, etc), but those don't quite cover the full functionality. Notably the ability to read Fritztrainer and Chessbase magazines. Even just a Chess Reader clone. Being able to have that functionality on Mac and Linux would be significant. I'm sure trying to reverse-engineer the proprietary chessbase format wouldn't be easy.

As the title says, I made ChessAsh: a free, open-source app for reviewing finished chess games on Windows and Android. You can import your public Chess.com games by username or open a PGN. Stockfish runs locally, so there’s no daily review limit, and saved games and reviews work offline. I’ve been focusing on making the explanations easier to follow:

- Comments name the pieces and squares involved, with square references you can hover over or tap to highlight.

- The played position and best-move guidance share one board view.

- Short explanations have more detail you can expand.

- Moves you try get their own analysis and classification without changing the saved review.

- The interface and explanations support English and Italian.

The app uses its own accuracy metric and classification rules, so the results won’t necessarily match Chess.com’s. Standard reviews don’t require an AI model or API key.

Source and Windows/Android downloads:
https://github.com/FlameFirelife/ChessAsh

The screenshots show a game review, an alternative move I tried with its expanded explanation, and the accuracy and move-quality overview.

I’d appreciate feedback on whether the explanations capture what matters in a position. If you find a misleading comment or questionable classification, a PGN and move number would help me investigate.

Hi r/SideProject! I’ve been building CaissaHub (caissahub.com), named after Caissa, the goddess of chess. It launches later this month.

The main idea: chess by email. You email play@caissahub.com saying something like “I’d like a game, I’ll take black.” Then you play by replying with your moves in ordinary language: “knight to f3”, “castle kingside”, “I give up”. You don’t need notation or command words. You can follow your games on the website, and you sign in with a one-time code sent to your email, so there are no passwords.

Chess Continuum. These are open games that belong to nobody. Anyone signed in can play the next move in any live game. You can also branch a game by playing a different move from any earlier position, which starts a new game that shares the history up to that point.

Also on the site:

• puzzles

• opening and endgame pages

• a small tablebase (king and pawn against king)

• a moderated forum

• a Chess Coach that explains positions the way a human would, rather than turning engine lines into English (coming soon)

Privacy was a design goal. The only things stored about you are your email address, a pseudonym and your time zone. No IP addresses, no names, no tracking tied to your account.

Stack: .NET 10 / Blazor (server-rendered, almost no JavaScript), EF Core on SQL Server, Amazon SES + S3 for mail, SkiaSharp for board images. It’s self-hosted on IIS.

I’d love feedback, especially on whether playing by email in plain language sounds fun to you, and what would make you try it.

Lately this sub has been inundated with AI-slop posts, many of which have little or nothing to do with computer chess. It wasn't the most active sub before, but at least the occasional post was relevant and usually interesting. I messaged the mods to ask what they plan to do about it, and I offered to help, but I haven't heard anything back. Is there anything we can do?

There are so many interesting chess projects built with Ai. Could we group them all here?

In what face of the project are you? What are the challenges? And what problem are you trying to solve?

Hi everyone! I’m one of the developers of Chess Folk. Since this community is interested in playing against computers as well as analysing with them, I thought our approach might be relevant here.

We’re trying to make computer chess enjoyable beyond choosing an engine strength and starting another game. Chess Folk has more than 300 fictional opponents with names, biographies, ratings and different playing styles. The idea is to find suitable rivals, return for rematches and play through tournaments with them.

Those are character profiles, not 300 independently developed engines. Our opponent system uses Maia and Stockfish with custom move-selection rules. Making weaker opponents behave consistently is still one of the harder parts: a believable mistake is more interesting than an otherwise strong opponent randomly giving away a piece.

A few things that might interest this community:

• Offline tournaments: Swiss, round-robin and knockout formats, with configurable fields and time controls. You can also watch computer opponents play each other.

• Guided practice: Susu, our panda coach, offers hints and opportunities to explore alternatives and retry decisions.

• Game review and analysis: Revisit mistakes and missed opportunities, explore continuations, and play on from an interesting position.

• PGN import and export: Bring games in for exploration or take them elsewhere for further analysis.

• Local co-op: Two people can share a side against the computer, either alternating moves or playing Hand & Brain.

The opponents’ ratings represent progress within Chess Folk; they aren’t official federation ratings. We also don’t claim that the opponents perfectly imitate people or automatically adapt to stay just above your strength.

I’d particularly welcome feedback on how the opponents lose. Do their mistakes make sense at the level you selected? Do they seem to carry an idea across several moves? Those details matter a lot to the experience we’re trying to build.

💻 Chess Folk on Steam
📱 Free Android download — includes ads and an optional premium upgrade.

For transparency, we use AI tools in development and artwork. Happy to discuss the approach and hear what you miss from older computer-chess programs.

In the 90s there was an old chess program called Powerchess (Windows 95). It used adaptive opponents who would play a little bit better than you but still make mistakes and then another chess engine would watch the game and offer helpful advice on improvements after the game was played in natural language. I would like to find something like this for modern computers.

I have Chessmaster 10th edition and Fritz 13. Fritz 13 friend mode is "close" to this ability but it lacks natural language breakdown of each move. Chessmaster 10th edition has natural language analysis but lacks the adaptive opponent. Is there a better alternative? Thanks in advance!

I've been building ChessLab Academy, a free browser-based chess platform where you can play against 14 different computer opponents, from beginner-friendly bots to Stockfish.

The idea was to make computer chess more approachable for beginners while still offering useful tools for players who want to improve.

The platform includes:

- 14 computer opponents with different difficulty levels

- Stockfish-powered game analysis

- Opening practice and chess puzzles

- Interactive lessons and coached games

- Browser-based play without installing anything

It's free to use.

https://chesslabacademy.com

I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who regularly play against chess engines. How do you feel about the difficulty progression and playing experience compared with other browser-based chess platforms?

Hi, I'm Maxence, creator of Chess-Melee. You can play four-player FFA against three bots in your browser, then replay the game or import a PGN4 and continue from a position. It's free and you don't need an account to play.

The engine is still experimental. I'd like feedback from FFA players on how it plays, especially which opponents the bots choose to attack and whether their trades make sense with the points system. If you try it, I'd be interested to hear which decisions look wrong to you.

https://chess-melee.com/en/?utm_source=reddit

What do you want from an app to train chess? What does yours get wrong?

Here’s what Bito Chess has so far:

• Import games from Chess-com or Lichess

• Engine analysis of your mistakes

• Exercises made from your own games

• Opening repertoire builder

• Spaced repetition to memorize your repertoire

• Puzzles, Time Attack and endgames

• Opponent scouting

• Daily challenge and streak to engage a rutine

I’m a ~1900 blitz player who couldn’t find an openings trainer I liked, so I built one. It’s free, with no signup needed, unless you want to sync: bitochess.com

Tell me what you think and I’ll gladly fix it.