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AI · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Play Chess Without Moving Pieces

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.

Play Chess Without Moving Pieces is a chess variant tool where players guess AI engine positions from randomized board setups. Based on Random Fischer and Really Bad Chess variants, it rearranges pieces to prevent… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Play Chess Without Moving Pieces launched in 2017; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1CA
  2. 2
    Noctie▲284

    Practice chess with a genius owl

    2024 · noctie.ai · its alternatives →

  3. 3CG

    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 →

  4. 4

    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 →

  5. 5MO

    rearrange the chess pieces so that the number of pieces threatening each square matches the large number in that square? pieces move freely https://chedoku.com/#dailypuzzle

    2023 · its alternatives →

  6. 6LA

    Laser is a turn based game similar to chess, with different piece movement rules, starting position, and win conditions. It's named after the laser piece, which can shoot diagonally through every piece on the board except for the wall, which blocks it. The detailed rules are on the website. I made the website as a super minimal way to play online against friends. Nobody really knows about it so it might be hard to find a game, but maybe you will against someone on HN if people read this. It uses the lichess.org chessboard UI which is super pretty and allows you to draw on the board, make…

    2023 · playlaser.xyz · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    I 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 →

  8. 8

    Unique real-time chess without a queue for a move

    2022 · storm-chess.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    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 →

  10. 10

    Memorize a chess position, rebuild it from memory, and get an instant score. Play free to train board vision, visualization, and spatial memory.

    2025 · thememorychess.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    Kung Fu Chess, a real-time chess game. Contribute to paladin8/kfchess-cc development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12CE

    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 →

  13. 13

    A casual chess game where games only last 5 minutes

    2020 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    Precision Thinking Practical Living

    2019 · reinechess.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    Scan score sheets and generate chess games in seconds.

    2024 · chessscanner.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Play Chess in Augmented Reality

    2017 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    Hello! 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 →

  18. 18

    Chess for macOS

    2020 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    2D chessboard scanner & analyzer to calculate the best moves

    2021 · play.google.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    A chess engine implementation inspired by AlphaZero, using MLX for neural network computations and Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) for move selection.

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Analyze every chess move.

    2025 · chessfish.io · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    Solo dev here. Schmess is chess with the turn structure removed. Both players move whenever they have a free slot, and every piece freezes on a cooldown after it moves. It's on a half board, with 100+ puzzle stages. If two people played this over a physical board they'd scrape each other's fingers raw - that's roughly the tempo. Plays in the browser, no signup. 29 stages free, one-time unlock for the rest ($3.99 / Rs 149). No subscription, no ads. It's the second of a few small-board variants I'm building (halfchess was the first, more coming). Building a chess engine for a game with no…

    Jul 2026 · schmess.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    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.

    Nov 2025 · mchess.io · its alternatives →

  24. 24OC

    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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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 →