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Show HN: Noctie – A chess AI that predicts your rating

noctie.ai

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Show HN: Noctie – A chess AI that predicts your rating

#1

Post by MereGurudev »

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 well as predicting the level of the opponents play.

I want to develop this into kind of an AI coach that you can spar certain positions against and get feedback suited for your level. Happy for any suggestions!

Show HN: Noctie – A chess AI that predicts your rating
noctie.ai

Re: Show HN: Noctie – A chess AI that predicts your rating

#3

Post by kennyfrc »

This looks great! I’ve played a couple of games in the Open Sicilian and the French Tarrasch and there wasn’t a moment that I felt like I was playing against a computer. It plays some cheezy lines which I would expect from a lichess player.

On the user side - I think the review area would benefit from principle-based analysis similar to what is seen in chess.com. I am guessing that for it to happen, there needs to be a separate analysis engine that can detect positional motifs. I think chess.com did a decent job with that (better and more actionable than decodechess in my opinion).

On the tech side - I’m curious how this project differs from existing neural nets trained for lc0 such as bad gyal and maia?

Re: Show HN: Noctie – A chess AI that predicts your rating

#4

Post by jdthedisciple »

I played a few moves and it seems the AI just stopped playing?

This happened twice now (at move 3 the second time).

I'm not sure it should take that long especially in opening moves.

Is it doing very deep analysis? Am I up against depth 40 stockfish calculations here?

Re: Show HN: Noctie – A chess AI that predicts your rating

#6

Post by MereGurudev »

jdthedisciple wrote: post #4

I played a few moves and it seems the AI just stopped playing? This happened twice now (at move 3 the second time). I'm not sure it should take that long especially in opening moves. Is it doing very deep analysis? Am I up against depth 40 stockfish calculations here?

Hey, sorry to hear that, the moves should usually be played very fast in the opening, and only up to 5–10 seconds in tactical situations, so I think you might have encountered a bug. Noctie does almost no calculation, just like a human, BTW.

Was this in the rate-me page or as a logged in user? You can mail me with the e-mail in my profile if you'd like to help debug!

Re: Show HN: Noctie – A chess AI that predicts your rating

#7

Post by jdthedisciple »

MereGurudev wrote: post #6
jdthedisciple wrote: post #4

I played a few moves and it seems the AI just stopped playing? This happened twice now (at move 3 the second time). I'm not sure it should take that long especially in opening moves. Is it doing very deep analysis? Am I up against depth 40 stockfish calculations here?

Hey, sorry to hear that, the moves should usually be played very fast in the opening, and only up to 5–10 seconds in tactical situations, so I think you might have encountered a bug. Noctie does almost no calculation, just like a human, BTW. Was this in the rate-me page or as a logged in user? You can mail me with the e-mail in my profile if you'd like to help debug!

This was in the rate me page.

Yea it definitely took way more than 10 seconds.

Nice peoject tho! I'm interested in how it'd rate me.

Re: Show HN: Noctie – A chess AI that predicts your rating

#8

Post by MereGurudev »

kennyfrc wrote: post #3

This looks great! I’ve played a couple of games in the Open Sicilian and the French Tarrasch and there wasn’t a moment that I felt like I was playing against a computer. It plays some cheezy lines which I would expect from a lichess player. On the user side - I think the review area would benefit from principle-based analysis similar to what is seen in chess.com. I am guessing that for it to happen, there needs to be…

Thanks a lot, and happy to hear about your experience! Yes, the review mode is quite basic at this point but I hope to add more features soon, including some that are unique when compared to chess.com.

On the tech side, what Maia is doing I think is similar to our NN component. It turns out to get realistic play (include randomness, avoid too many one-move blunders, same level of tactical play as positional play, realistic endgame play, etc.) you have to do quite a lot on top of that – much more than I initially thought. I have tested the AI over the last year with friends of different strengths to try to make the gameplay more realistic and engaging. I also think the automatic adaptation to your level of play, and predicting the rating, is unique. Bad gyal AFAIK uses a different training method where Stockfish evaluations is involved, but I haven't really tested it enough to know how it stands vs. Maia.

Re: Show HN: Noctie – A chess AI that predicts your rating

#10

Post by lupire »

On mobile Firefox the zoom is shaky and halfway through the game it zoomed in and didn't zoom back out so I couldn't see the whole board for the rest of the game.

The promotion menu disappears so I couldn't promote.

It also draws wrong if I preemove a recapture and then change to a new move. More generally, it allows infinite premoves and crashes.

Also, the clock is distracting, especially because the proportional font keeps moving the digits. Besides that, pretty good. And the colors are mushy and low contrast.

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