By Sherif | January 26, 2025
I know a chess bot is not groundbreaking, and it’s probably the last thing the world needs more of, but here I am with mine. Undertaking this process wasn’t about reinventing the wheel—it was more like, “Hey, let me build a wheel and see if it spins without wobbling all over the place.” So here we go!
Because why not? Building this bot was about challenging my coding skills, experimenting with an end-to-end deployment process, and convincing myself that all those YouTube tutorials were worth the watch. The result? A chess bot that lets you play as Black or White, adjusts difficulty, evaluates positions with Stockfish, and is served fresh on the web.
But let’s be real: nobody asked for this, and I built it anyway. It’s like bringing potato salad to a barbecue where everyone already brought potato salad. Still, this is my potato salad, and it’s loaded with tech-stack goodness.
Here’s what I used to glue this bot together:
chessboard.js, Bootstrap, and jQuery (Oldies but goodies. Reliable as ever.)Django (Because I like my backend served with Pythonic elegance.)python-chess + Stockfish (Because letting my bot "think" for itself seemed important.)I picked Django because it’s fast to set up, has a great ORM (which I didn’t even need for this project, but still...), and its admin panel is like having a Swiss Army knife. Django also lets you build APIs with ease using Django REST Framework, which made my bot’s brain accessible to the frontend.
Because playing only as White would be like always having the first slice of pizza—selfish.
Not everyone wants to get obliterated by Stockfish in the opening. Difficulty levels allow the bot to occasionally “forget” its best moves and play like it’s had a long day.
At any point, you can ask, “Am I losing, or am I losing badly?” Stockfish comes in clutch here to provide position evaluations in centipawns.
Thanks to Bootstrap, the interface looks sharp and modern. It’s a chessboard, but hey, it’s a good-looking chessboard.
Setting up chessboard.js to sync with the backend was like teaching a cat to fetch. Sure, it’ll work, but only after some frustration. The board’s state and the backend’s game logic needed constant handshakes, and sometimes they got their wires crossed.
Making the bot play "badly" without being too bad was trickier than it sounds. I had to adjust Stockfish depth searches and add randomization to simulate human error.
Docker was supposed to make deployment easier, but my first few attempts were like trying to shove a square peg into a round hole. I ended up Googling “Why is my Docker container not working?” more times than I care to admit.
Evaluations with Stockfish, especially when increasing search depth, sometimes introduced delays. Optimizing this while maintaining a smooth user experience was a balancing act.
Building this chess bot was a lot like chess itself—equal parts strategy and chaos. Sure, the world didn’t need another chess bot, but I learned a lot, had fun, and deployed something that works (and doesn’t break too often).
So if you’re looking to build your own chess bot, or you just want to laugh at someone else’s code-induced headaches, give this project a try. The world might not thank you, but your inner nerd absolutely will.
Here’s to building yet another chess bot no one asked for! 🥂
Let me know if you’d like to see the codebase or need help setting up your own.