Work · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Play against well-known chess players' openings
Hi, this is my first HN submission so please forgive the rough edges. For this project gathered chess positions from some well-known chess players with a lot of games. (Usually ~25k games and 1M+ positions. The most for any player was GM Aman Hambleton with 1.8M positions indexed.) With each board position I create a probability distribution of moves the player has made from that position. Then, I simply draw from that distribution (with sampling temperature) to choose a move. As long as there's at least one game with a given position, you can keep playing. You'll see that it's pretty easy…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Play against well-known chess players' openings launched in 2022; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1WU
Chess openings visualized from over 800 million Lichess games, 2 million tournament games and 1 million chess engine games.
2019 · chessroots.com · its alternatives →
- 2CG
For no specific reason, I trained a neural network to generate random chess positions that look similar to positions from actual games (from lichess db). I also made it so you can condition it on some fixed pieces, and adjust the number of pieces. It turned out to be quite effective and I find it surprisingly fun and instructive to generate e.g. endgame positions with a certain pawn structure (set low temperature, place some pawns and position the kings, adjust number of pieces to get an endgame), and then figure out how to win vs. the computer in those positions. I hooked it up so that you…
2024 · chessdream.ai · its alternatives →
- 3
blunderchess.net is an open source, peer-to-peer chess app where every five moves, players each get to make one blunder-move for their opponent
2025 · blunderchess.net · its alternatives →
- 4
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 →
- 5
- 6
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 →
- 7
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 →
- 8
Master your chess openings the interactive way
2025 · chess999.com · its alternatives →
- 9
Two years ago I sat down to build a chess engine for my kids' Christmas present. Wanted it to play badly enough to be beatable but not randomly bad: different styles so they could choose what to face. While building those styles I noticed the choices started looking like actual historical players' tendencies. Went looking. Turns out: given enough games from one person, you can extract enough of their decision pattern to reproduce it. Two years later, 41 players, ~3,000 games each. Tal sacrifices unsoundly. Morphy attacks like it's 1850. Capablanca grinds endgames. Same engine underneath,…
Apr 2026 · playchessgate.com · its alternatives →
- 10
Practice chess openings until they stick
Jul 2026 · trychessmate.com · its alternatives →
- 11OC
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 →
- 12
Don't Blunder, a chess middlegame trainer
Oct 2025 · dontblunder.com · its alternatives →
- 13
I built this because I got tired of Stockfish giving me evaluations (+0.5) without explaining the actual plan. Most opening explorers focus on statistics (Win/Loss/Draw). I wanted a tool that explains the strategic intent behind the moves (e.g., "White plays c4 to clamp down on d5" vs just "White plays c4"). The Project: Comprehensive Database: I’ve mapped and annotated over 3,500 named opening variations. It covers everything from main lines (Ruy Lopez, Sicilian) to deep sidelines. Strategic Visualization: The UI highlights key squares and draws arrows based on the textual…
Jan 2026 · atlaschess.me · its alternatives →
- 14
- 15
Rating Relative Chess Analysis
Jul 2026 · rated-analysis.pickle-dev.com · its alternatives →
- 16
Stop grinding tactics. Master Positional Chess & Strategy
Jul 2026 · chessneurons.com · its alternatives →
- 17IB
Hi HN, here is my humble weekend project. I couldn’t find any similar utilities online that would let me download all of my chess games, so I decided to make one. It’s definitely imperfect, so please let me know if you have any feedback!
2023 · chessgamedownloader.fly.dev · its alternatives →
- 18
Chessmate is a transformer-based model that predicts your next chess move, tailored to players around 1500 ELO on lichess. Soon it will also offer personalized models and a broader range of ELO-based models. Hopefully this can offer a new and innovative way to learn chess and enjoy playing against a uniquely challenging bot!
2024 · chessmate.ai · its alternatives →
- 19
- 20LB
I made this basic website for my daughter (6) to learn how to move chess pieces. I wanted a simple game which didn't have all the rules, just how to get from A to B with a piece. Admittedly, as soon as I made this a friend pointed out https://lichess.org/learn which is really nice! There are a bunch of settings you can tweak to set the difficulty etc. Anyway, maybe will be a fun (short) diversion.
Oct 2025 · minichessgames.com · its alternatives →
- 21
Test your prompt engineering skills by writing prompts and battling them against each other! Your prompt template can access the board state, the move history, and a list of legal moves, and the game engine selects the first legal move in the string response from the LLM you query. My best prompt so far ignores the board state and the move history and just tries to play mates, make captures, and promote pawns. Can you do better?
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 22
Replay famous chess positions. Feel why they're legendary.
Mar 2026 · playchess.tech · its alternatives →
- 23
Hello, This is something I've wanted to build for awhile (first bought the domain in 2020 (then lost it for a year+)). It's a tactics solver on each new tab page. There are 5 modes of play: Easy (<1200 elo) Medium (1200-1800) Hard (1800-2400) Expert (2400+) Speedrun (solve as many puzzles as possible in 60 seconds). I'm having a ton of fun with it, and definitely noticing improvements with actual games (definitely solved the most puzzles in my life while developing this extension). If you check it out, please let me know what you think. Any feedback is good!
Apr 2026 · leetchess.com · its alternatives →
- 24
I built a chess game where every piece-type is an AI agent with its own personality. Just type "Use https://chessminds.fun /play.md to start a chess game" in your claude code.
May 2026 · chessminds.fun · its alternatives →
Also compare
- We used 890M chess games to make an interactive opening graph alternatives
- Chessdream – Generate realistic chess positions with AI alternatives
- Blunderchess.net – blunder for your opponent every five moves alternatives
- Play Chess Without Moving Pieces alternatives
- Matchess alternatives
- Chess Twist alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →