Frequently Asked Questions

Pychess is a website dedicated to allowing people to play major and interesting chess variants (both regional and more modern chess variants). Please see the about page.

The server code is written in Python.

Both are designed to play chess variants, and both share the same developer (gbtami). However, the similitudes end there. The full name for this site is "Pychess Variants" for distinction, but is often just called Pychess. The site for the desktop application is here.

Pychess's design is heavily influenced by Lichess and is meant to be comfortable for Lichess users. Pychess has no official relationship to Lichess. However, it does use Lichess accounts to facilitate user management.

Stockfish is one of the premier engines designed to play chess. Fairy-Stockfish is a fork of that created by Ianfab to handle multiple chess variants.

It is the strongest available on this site, but does not represent Fairy-Stockfish at full strength. Full strength requires more time to think and analyze; on Pychess, Stockfish is limited to less than a second for each move.

Make an issue. Ultimately it needs to be filed in the Github issue tracker. Ideally, try to find a way to reproduce this bug in your description (if necessary, include the browser and OS). If you're not on Github, you can also mention it on Discord, and someone else can file it.

Check out the Variants page.

Check out the Variants page. Also, within a game, you can click the variant name at the top left to be taken to that game's learn page.

Major regional variants have high precedence. For western chess variants, often the most popular or well-known variants are added. However, there are still some that can't be added. Pychess relies on Fairy-Stockfish to support the variant, as our code also depends on Fairy-Stockfish for move validation. This also means no variants that aren't supported by Fairy-Stockfish can be on Pychess.

Shatranj is a dead variant, and there are similar games that are still alive (i.e. Makruk), so no. If you want to play Shatranj, there are other sites that offer it.

It depends on how popular or how interesting the variant is. We can't even consider adding variants that aren't supported by Fairy-Stockfish. Otherwise, you can ask us on Discord or Github.

To change the settings, click the gear button in the top right of the screen (next to login or your username).

Same answer as above, and then click on "Board Settings." All Asian variants have internationalized pieces.

Use the right click. Clicking gives you a circle, and dragging gives you an arrow. These are green by default. You can make them red by holding Shift or Ctrl, and you can make them blue by holding Alt.

Those are the time controls for the game. By default we use an increment system. "5+3" means each player has 5 minutes, and after each move adds 3 seconds to the clock. You can set the time control to be whatever you want when creating the game. The 5+3 is just the default for random mover.

The b signifies byo-yomi time control, which is different from increment, and is only used in certain variants (i.e. Shogi and Janggi). Each player has a fixed time bank (5 minutes, in this example), and then after that, they only have the byo-yomi period for the rest of their moves before losing. In this example, that means only 3 seconds per move. Typically, byo-yomi is played with more than just 3 seconds… usually anywhere from 10 seconds to 30 seconds.

Random-Mover is a bot that just chooses a random move from the list of available options. It serves as a great way to familiarize oneself with piece movements and some rules. It is strongly recommended to train against Fairy-Stockfish (even a lower level) once you know the rules though.

You need to have a Lichess account. If you don't already, please go to Lichess to make an account.

No! That is done via OAuth and your password isn't revealed to Pychess, just like how you can log in to third-party websites with your Google or Facebook accounts.

You can try the lobby chat, although the developers might not be on to answer. More reliably, we use Discord.

Purely through donations. You can become a patron to help us make this site better!

You sure can! Pychess is open source. Please communicate your suggestions by Github or Discord.