AI Satranç: Chess That Learns

This chess app doesn't know chess. Yet. Most chess apps ship with a ready-made, unbeatable engine. AI Satranç doesn't. The AI was born with a brain made of nothing but random numbers, knowing no chess at all. It knows the rules, but it is still learning to play well; today it is still a beginner. And it keeps learning. From your games, from every player's games, right in front of you. ◆ A REAL AI THAT REALLY LEARNS The method of the open-source Leela Chess Zero (Lc0) project: a neural network paired with Monte Carlo tree search. The AI sees the last 8 positions together; before every move it plays out hundreds of possible continuations in its head and predicts the chances of a win, draw or loss and how long the game will last. In the games it plays against itself, it learns to replace its first intuition with the move it found by thinking deeply. There is no built-in chess engine and no model brought in from outside: everything it knows, it learned from games played in the app. ◆ MEET ITS BRAIN • The collective brain's version: every new version reaches everyone's device • This device's contribution: the games you play and the ones it plays in training • "What it's thinking": the candidates it considered most on each move, and its winning chances • A live evaluation bar above the board ◆ SELF-TRAINING Open the Training tab, tap Start Training and watch the AI play against itself live. Like Leela Chess Zero's volunteer computers, the training data of every game goes to the collective brain, which is trained on it. One day it will beat you. The only question is when. ◆ ONE BRAIN, RAISED TOGETHER Training happens in one place, with every player's data: every game you play goes to the collective brain and its positions join training after being re-thought; your moves aren't copied, so a bad move can't spoil the brain. When a new version is ready it reaches everyone's device. What is sent is games' moves, results and training data — not your name, your account or any personal data. ◆ WHILE YOU PLAY • Drag or tap, both work • Four difficulty levels: Easy, Medium, Hard, Master • Hint arrow: what would the AI play here? • Four board themes, light and dark appearance • A game in progress is never lost; pick up where you left off • Undo, resign, play as white, black or random • Every game archived, replayable move by move and shareable as PGN • Castling, en passant, promotion, threefold repetition, the 50-move rule: every rule ◆ ALL YOURS No account, no sign-in, no ads, no in-app purchases, no tracking. Plays offline; your games reach the collective brain once you're online. On iPhone, iPad and Mac. A small warning: this is not a "strong opponent out of the box" app. The AI starts weak, on purpose. The point is to raise it. Watching how it learns is far more exciting than watching it win.