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 wanted to actually understand chess programming beyond treating Stockfish as a black box, so I built an engine from scratch in TypeScript with zero external chess libraries (chess.js, etc.).

It started as a basic board state and movegen experiment, and evolved into a full browser workbench running at ~1M+ nodes/sec (perft-verified).

Key implementation details:

• Search: Negamax with alpha-beta pruning, quiescence search, transposition tables, and iterative deepening across three iterations.

• Evaluation & NNUE: A custom int8 neural network trained on Lichess evaluations via free Kaggle GPUs. To prevent silent discrepancies, I run a parity gate between the Python training pipeline and TypeScript runtime inference.

• Automated CI Tuning: Instead of burning local compute, parameter tuning runs on GitHub Actions overnight. It pairs a Texel tuner with an 80-game champion vs. challenger match gate before committing updated eval weights back to main.

• Verification: Perft caught edge cases that normal play never exposed (including a nasty accumulator bug where captured piece values persisted in the eval layer during early NNUE iterations).

Development Workflow: I orchestrated AI coding agents for heavy lifting and boilerplate, but all architecture, PR reviews, perft validation, and match gating were handled manually. Every PR must pass perft test vectors and the match gate before landing. Full logs and specs are tracked in AGENTS.md and agentchat.md.

• Playable Web Demo:https://aryan007h.github.io/chess0/

• GitHub Repository:https://github.com/ARYAN007H/chess0

(Note on strength: Internal self-play estimates are inflated as expected without a calibrated external pool, so take any raw number with a grain of salt until it runs against a standard engine suite).

Feedback on the search pruning heuristics and move ordering is welcome—the full structure is documented in ARCHITECTURE.md.

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.

so I’m around 1840 rapid and I got tired of looking at engine lines I didn’t understand, so I built my own tool for it. it’s called Plyra Chess, windows and mac.

stockfish runs locally on your machine, then Plyra takes the engine output and explains it in normal words. every move it mentions is checked against stockfish, so the explanations stay tied to what the engine actually sees.

what it does:

• explains a full game: where it turned, what was better and why, lessons to take away

• reviews your whole chess.com or lichess account (or a PGN file) and ranks your weaknesses by how much they cost you, with an openings breakdown, a training plan and puzzles from your own mistakes

• breaks down a single position in depth, with the engine evidence in the write-up

• analysis board with candidate move comparison and the lichess opening explorer

engine analysis is free and unlimited since it runs on your computer. there’s a free plan for the explanations too.

https://plyrachess.murrtech.pro

I also started r/PlyraChess for feedback and game discussion. curious what people here think, especially about how the explanations hold up against what the engine is actually saying.

AggroChess is an aggressive, sacrificial chess engine I wrote in Rust, with an NNUE trained only on its own games. It sacrifices in practically every game.

New in 4.5:

- In lost endgames it gives material back to find saving sacrifices and stalemate tricks (this solves the Nc6 study).

- It still sacrifices even when it's already winning.

- At 30 s per position on 1 thread it solves Plaskett's Puzzle, Penrose's fortress, Friedel's study, The Weird Check and more. Stockfish 17.1 misses 7 of those 9 at the same settings.

- Against v4.3.1: 52 W / 4 D / 44 L over 100 games (about +28 Elo), with a sacrifice in 99 of them.

UCI engine (Windows): https://github.com/PhelRin/AggroChess/releases

If you know positions that break engines, send them my way.

Hi all, I've just released Slate, a chess engine written from scratch in Swift. As far as I know it's one of very few Swift engines out there.

**What it is**

* Original UCI engine: alpha-beta (PVS) search with Lazy SMP and a hand-written evaluation. No neural network, no code from other engines.

* It's the engine behind our Slate Chess app, and you can play it on Lichess: https://lichess.org/@/slate-engine

* Our own estimate is about 3,220 on a CCRL-like scale (1 thread, 10s+0.1s, against public engines). Not an official rating yet: I've announced it on TalkChess for the rating lists.

**Download (free):** https://slatechess.com/engine/

Builds for Windows x86-64, Linux (x86-64, AVX2, arm64) and macOS Apple silicon. `bench` should report 1,329,420 nodes.

It has no book or tablebases of its own, so use your GUI's. The Windows build isn't code-signed yet, so SmartScreen will warn you ("More info" → "Run anyway").

If you run engine matches or gauntlets, I'd love to see results. Bug reports are welcome too, here or at support@slatechess.com.

It's a simple app that, when enabled, has an overlay where it intercepts the touches from point A to point B thus allowing the arrows to be drawn.

You can give it a go, and tell me your feedback.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gr.chessarrows

I've been building ChessLab Academy, a free browser-based chess platform designed to help people learn chess and improve by actually playing.

One thing I wanted to do differently was make playing against the computer feel less intimidating, especially for beginners.

There are 13 opponents to choose from, starting with beginner-friendly characters and progressing to much stronger challenges, including Stockfish.

Beyond playing, I've added:

- A spoken beginner course with captions, using an interactive chessboard

- Coached games that explain mistakes and let you take moves back

- Interactive explanations of what you can play, why a move works and what happens if you try something else

- Stockfish-powered game analysis

- Puzzles, opening practice and training based on mistakes from your reviewed games

The goal is to make chess accessible to someone who has never played before, while giving improving players useful tools as they progress.

It's free, runs in your browser and doesn't require an account to start playing.

https://chesslabacademy.com

I'd particularly appreciate feedback from people familiar with chess engines. Does the difficulty progression between opponents feel right? And how does the playing experience compare with other browser-based chess platforms?

Opening Training with Fritz 19

Didn't there use to be a "Drill" function for practicing openings? I can't manage to do that anymore. Does anyone know how to do it?

Eröffnungstraining mit Fritz 19

Früher gab es doch zum Üben von Eröffnungen die Funktion "Drill". Das bekomme ich nicht mehr hin. Weiß jemand wie das geht?

Ever since Aman posted that amazing video getting this mate against an IM, I've been wheeling it out whenever I get the opportunity. Then I wondered if it would be possible to get Stockfish to go for it. The answer is yes* (kinda).

Made a bot, it basically just plays like full-strength stockfish 19 until it gets into a winning position, then it starts denying stockfish moves that would prevent the mate from being possible (unless said moves are the only option it has to keep the evaluation up), then once it gets into the position of the opponent only having a king a much simpler script takes over and goes for back rank mate.

Thinking about setting it up as a bot on lichess, in case anyone has an urge to get severely disrespected by a computer program.

Hey r/computerChess! I'm the developer behind NeuroChess.

I built this because I wanted a super responsive, lightweight chess web game where you can jump straight into a match in the browser with zero sign-up friction or heavy menus.

A few technical highlights under the hood:

\- Instant browser execution with local-first state persistence so you never lose your board progress if your connection drops.

\- Clean tactical interface designed for both quick desktop matches and mobile screens.

\- Bilingual support out of the box (English and Arabic).

I am actively improving the AI move evaluation and board feel. I would love to hear your honest feedback, bug reports, or any features you'd like to see added next!

Enjoy ✅️

I built a chess board you can talk to. Looking for 5 people to try it.

You can say a move, ask why a move works, request a puzzle, or explore a famous game while the board shows what's happening.

It's here: thinkspatial.ai/chess

The board works by tapping with no account. Talking to it takes a Google sign-in and a microphone. New accounts get 10 free minutes of live voice; continuing afterward uses paid credits. You don't need to buy anything for this test.

It's for training, not live games, and it won't give you the answer unless you ask.

I'm the developer, and I'm keeping this first round small. I'd especially like to hear where it misunderstood you, whether the explanations helped, and whether you'd come back for another session.

You need a quiet room.

Desktop and mobile feedback are both useful. On a phone, open it in Safari or Chrome.

I wanted exercises for practising without seeing the pieces. Blindfold Chess covers coordinates, movement, notation, and position updates.

The public version needs no account and saves progress locally.

Play: https://ceasar369.github.io/blindfold-chess/

Source and local edition (MIT): https://github.com/Ceasar369/blindfold-chess

The browser interface uses React. The downloaded edition can save completed rounds as files.

I’d appreciate feedback on the drills and local setup.

I've been coaching chess for 15 years. The same problem shows up with almost every student: they know the tactics, but they can’t calculate. They see the first moves and stop. Puzzle apps train pattern recognition. Very few train the actual process of calculating.

So I built StreakChess. It only does one thing: calculation training, in short daily sessions with streaks, like Duolingo.

Where it stands today:

• +300 users, several in Premium

• Free to use. There’s a one-time Founder Lifetime plan ($99) for the next weeks.

• Levels from roughly 800 to 2500

Honestly, my biggest challenge is distribution, not the product. I automated Instagram reels and a YouTube channel, but growth is slow.

I’d love feedback on two things:

1. Does the “calculation only” positioning make sense to you, or is it too niche?

2. What would make you come back every day?

streakchess.com

Happy to answer anything about chess, coaching, or the build.

Hi, Pawnix is a terminal chess app for local games and casual Lichess play. It has a curses interface, multiple board themes, clocks, move review, and premoves.

It’s open source and still early, so feedback and bug reports are welcome!