AI · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Chess on a Donut/Torus and Deep-Dive
Hey there! I just finished a youtube video explaining our donut chess in detail: https://youtu.be/iRcfHCPFgkM So I thought it'd be cool to show it off here too- it can be played around with at mchess.io/donut - you can also set up an AI or online game on the site. This is all indie dev work from a couple friends and myself.
Chess on a Donut/Torus is a variant of chess played on a toroidal board, created by indie developers. Players can experiment with the game at mchess.io/donut, where they can compete against AI opponents or play online… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
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2021 · chrisbutner.github.io · its alternatives →
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Hi HN! I'm the developer of rdx, a mildly popular ad-free, privacy and user friendly Reddit client. This time, I made something for a very specific use case: solving chess puzzles with no internet. Why? Well, my Wi-Fi is terrible in the bathroom—and that's where I do some of my best thinking. I tried printing out “mate in X” puzzles to solve offline, but they weren’t fun without interaction. So I built OffChess. OffChess is an iPhone/Android app that contains over 100,000 chess puzzles, fully offline and completely ad-free. You can solve puzzles by category (Mate in…
2025 · offchess.com · its alternatives →
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I built over the last two years a human-like neural network chess engine that tries to predict your rating from a single game. It automatically adapts to your play and tries to play like a human at your level would play, giving you a balanced game. At the core I’m using an AlphaZero / Leela Chess Zero style neural network that I have trained on 1 billion human games from the lichess.org open database. Around this network I have built a chess engine in Rust with algorithms that use the outputs from the NN to produce human-like moves at a given rating from beginner to world champion, as…
2022 · noctie.ai · its alternatives →
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Spicy Chess▲76Hello! I created SpicyChess(https://spicychess.com) because I wanted a tactics training app that would have the following features: - Spaced Repetition. - Countdown time to simulate blitz Chess where you have to find the best move quickly. - The ability to save puzzles for later review. I'd love to hear any feedback that you may have !
2023 · spicychess.com · its alternatives →
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2025 · knightride.rakhim.org · its alternatives →
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Voronoi Go▲158I posted once before but wanted to share again because a lot has changed. There's now a fairly strong bot to play against (contributed by a community member) and also correspondence games. The combination of these things helps a bit in finding people to play against.
Aug 2026 · voronoigo.com · its alternatives →
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We built ChessBoss at the TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon this week. It didn’t make the top 10 but I thought Hacker News might think it’s pretty cool. https://devpost.com/software/chess-boss There are these really cool smart chessboards that can suggest moves and track your games... but they’re $400 and weigh 19 pounds. And of course there are apps that can analyze games but tracking and inputting games by hand is a huge pain. Or fully-digital chess apps... but board games are way more fun in real life! We wondered: “why can’t you just do that in software and bring the best…
2019 · devpost.com · its alternatives →
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Guess AI Engine Tournament Position, Fun Stury Tool. Play Chess Without Moving Pieces. Crazy Chess is a Variant of Random Fisher and Really Bad Chess. Because of the rearranged pieces, players cannot use typical chess opening moves. study tool to understand chess, and learning how to read the board.
2017 · ba.net · its alternatives →
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Play chess online for free on Chess.com with over 250 million members from around the world. Have fun playing with friends or challenging the computer!
2011 · multiplayerchess.com · its alternatives →
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Chess Twist▲29I continue my experiment of transposing classic games onto an irregular grid. I've previously released variants of minesweeper and checkers. And now I'd like to share my variant of Chess. Chess can be a pretty punishing game, but I thought this was nevertheless a way to make it even more challenging by making it trickier to anticipate your opponent, even though both players still have the same information. From the playtests I've done, that challenge is pretty compelling. It also seems to be more fun at 2 people, where both players keep surprising one another.
2024 · polyreplay.com · its alternatives →
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ChessBout▲12Multiple-choice chess duels & daily challenges ♟️
May 2026 · chessbout.com · its alternatives →
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I built 1e4.ai - a chess web app where you play against neural networks trained to mimic human Lichess players at specific Elo ranges. There's a separate model for each 100-point rating bucket from ~800 to 2200+, and the bots not only choose human-like moves but also burn clock time, play worse under time pressure, and blunder in human-like ways. Live demo: https://1e4.ai Code: https://github.com/thomasj02/1e4_ai A few things that might be interesting: - Trained on almost a full year of Lichess blitz games, around 1B total games - Architecture is an a small…
May 2026 · its alternatives →
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Hi HN, I’ve released a new version of chess-tui, a Rust terminal UI for playing live games against Lichess opponents. The update includes a cleaner TUI, better performance, improved keybindings, and smoother real-time integration with the Lichess API. It’s designed as a simple, fast way to play chess without leaving the terminal. Repo:https://github.com/thomas-mauran/chess-tui Feedback and bug reports are welcome. Happy to answer questions!
Dec 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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My personal project: https://github.com/leonidasdeim/chasse Goal was to build session based chessboard game without any rules - to play just like oldschool over the board. Just create new board and share link with a friend. I would appreciate any feedback and github star. Thanks!
2023 · chasse.fun · its alternatives →
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Play chess online for free against computer or friend!
Jan 2026 · free-online-chess.com · its alternatives →
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LearnChess▲29I've been playing chess for a few years with my ELO stuck around 1600 on Lichess. I wanted an app that combined puzzle training, interactive lessons, game analysis, and AI coaching in one place. But all the apps I used over the years either felt overwhelming, had UX that wasn't up to my expectations for a modern app or were lacking some fundamental features that I really wanted. So, I built LearnChess.ai. The technical angle I'm most excited about: it's built local-first using LiveStore (event-sourced, SQLite on-device), which means zero loading delays for user data and full offline support.…
Jul 2026 · learnchess.ai · its alternatives →
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Build your chess bot and play ChatGPT that breaks the rules
Apr 2026 · nekochess.com · its alternatives →
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Hi HN, I've built Skub, a sliding puzzle game for the browser, based on a classic boardgame: Ricochet Robots. It started as a challenge of trying to simplify the boardgame mechanics to fit on a mobile browser, which led to an 8x8 grid. Since, it has evolved to a bit more of an experimentation with Deno, and a way for me to truly try out AI-assisted development. Claude Code has been especially helpful in building the BFS solver and setting up CI, less so in UI and logic. I hope you enjoy it, all questions / feedback welcome.
Mar 2026 · skub.app · its alternatives →
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- ChessCoach – A neural chess engine that comments on each player's moves alternatives
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- OffChess – Offline chess puzzles app alternatives
- Noctie – A chess AI that predicts your rating alternatives
- Spicy Chess alternatives
- I made a little puzzle game about a rogue chess knight alternatives
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