README.md

Chessidle is a Python chess engine that can analyze standard and chess960 (Fischer random) chess positions.

Installation

Requires Python 3.9+

Download the latest release from pypi:

pip install chessidle

or download the most recent development version from source:

git clone https://github.com/alvinypeng/chessidle
cd chessidle
pip install .

Usage

Run UCI

chessidle

Run as a module if running as a script does not work:

python -m chessidle

Use with python-chess

It is possible to use Chessidle with python-chess. Here is a small example script to play against Chessidle in the terminal.

import chess
import chess.engine

board = chess.Board()
engine = chess.engine.SimpleEngine.popen_uci('chessidle')

while not board.is_game_over():
    print(board, '\n')

    s = input('Your move:') if board.turn else engine.play(board, chess.engine.Limit(time=3)).move.uci()
    
    for push in (board.push_uci, board.push_san):
        try:
            push(s)
            print(s, 'played \n')
            break
        except ValueError:
            pass
    else:
        print('Invalid move \n')

print(board, '\n\n', 'Game is over')
engine.quit()

Supported UCI commands

Options

Hash Threads MultiPV UCI_Chess960 MoveOverhead

Go

wtime btime winc binc movestogo depth nodes movetime

Acknowledgements

Neural networks for this project are trained on data generated by Leela Chess Zero.