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chrisbutner
ChessCoach
C++2021–2021
chrisbutner / ChessCoach

ChessCoach

Neural network-based chess engine capable of natural language commentary

2Distinct people
3Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
541GitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Neural network-based chess engine capable of natural language commentary

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by hour3 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2021-10-05 20:32:10 UTC to 2021-10-06 19:38:07 UTC.

012021-10-05 20:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-05 21:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 commentsOct 5, 20:002021-10-05 21:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-05 22:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-10-05 22:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-05 23:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-10-05 23:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-06 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-10-06 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-06 01:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-10-06 01:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-06 02:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-10-06 02:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-06 03:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-10-06 03:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-06 04:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-10-06 04:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-06 05:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-10-06 05:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-06 06:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-10-06 06:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-06 07:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-10-06 07:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-06 08:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 commentsOct 6, 07:002021-10-06 08:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-06 09:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-10-06 09:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-06 10:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-10-06 10:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-06 11:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-10-06 11:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-06 12:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-10-06 12:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-06 13:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-10-06 13:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-06 14:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-10-06 14:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-06 15:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2021-10-06 15:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-06 16:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-10-06 16:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-06 17:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-10-06 17:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-06 18:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-10-06 18:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-06 19:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2021-10-06 19:00:00 UTC to 2021-10-06 20:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 commentsOct 6, 19:00

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
Oct 5, 20:002021-10-05 20:00:00 UTC2021-10-05 21:00:00 UTC101
Oct 5, 21:002021-10-05 21:00:00 UTC2021-10-05 22:00:00 UTC000
Oct 5, 22:002021-10-05 22:00:00 UTC2021-10-05 23:00:00 UTC000
Oct 5, 23:002021-10-05 23:00:00 UTC2021-10-06 00:00:00 UTC000
Oct 6, 00:002021-10-06 00:00:00 UTC2021-10-06 01:00:00 UTC000
Oct 6, 01:002021-10-06 01:00:00 UTC2021-10-06 02:00:00 UTC000
Oct 6, 02:002021-10-06 02:00:00 UTC2021-10-06 03:00:00 UTC000
Oct 6, 03:002021-10-06 03:00:00 UTC2021-10-06 04:00:00 UTC000
Oct 6, 04:002021-10-06 04:00:00 UTC2021-10-06 05:00:00 UTC000
Oct 6, 05:002021-10-06 05:00:00 UTC2021-10-06 06:00:00 UTC000
Oct 6, 06:002021-10-06 06:00:00 UTC2021-10-06 07:00:00 UTC000
Oct 6, 07:002021-10-06 07:00:00 UTC2021-10-06 08:00:00 UTC000
Oct 6, 08:002021-10-06 08:00:00 UTC2021-10-06 09:00:00 UTC000
Oct 6, 09:002021-10-06 09:00:00 UTC2021-10-06 10:00:00 UTC000
Oct 6, 10:002021-10-06 10:00:00 UTC2021-10-06 11:00:00 UTC000
Oct 6, 11:002021-10-06 11:00:00 UTC2021-10-06 12:00:00 UTC000
Oct 6, 12:002021-10-06 12:00:00 UTC2021-10-06 13:00:00 UTC000
Oct 6, 13:002021-10-06 13:00:00 UTC2021-10-06 14:00:00 UTC000
Oct 6, 14:002021-10-06 14:00:00 UTC2021-10-06 15:00:00 UTC101
Oct 6, 15:002021-10-06 15:00:00 UTC2021-10-06 16:00:00 UTC000
Oct 6, 16:002021-10-06 16:00:00 UTC2021-10-06 17:00:00 UTC000
Oct 6, 17:002021-10-06 17:00:00 UTC2021-10-06 18:00:00 UTC000
Oct 6, 18:002021-10-06 18:00:00 UTC2021-10-06 19:00:00 UTC000
Oct 6, 19:002021-10-06 19:00:00 UTC2021-10-06 20:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

3 sources
This took about a year and a half – a little over a year coding in between experiments and training. It's a chess engine with a primary neural network just like AlphaZero or Leela Chess Zero's, but it adds on a secondary "commentary decoder" network based on Transformer architecture to comment on positions and moves. All of the code and data for training and search is from scratch, although it does use Stockfish code to generate legal moves and manage chess positions. You can watch it play on Lichess here: https://lichess.org/@/PlayChessCoach/tv or challenge it here: https://lichess.org/?user=PlayChessCoach#friend, and see its commentary in spectator chat. It only plays one game at a time, so you may need to wait a little bit. It's fairly strong (~3450 rating, roughly on par with Stockfish 12 or SlowChess Blitz 2.7), but you can set up a
Read the rest
position when challenging it so that it's missing a couple pawns or a piece (Variant: From Position). I ended up writing much more about it than I expected. If you're into the technical side of chess or machine learning, beyond the linked overview, there's: High-level explanation: https://chrisbutner.github.io/ChessCoach/high-level-explanat... Technical explanation: https://chrisbutner.github.io/ChessCoach/technical-explanati... (including code pointers) Development process: https://chrisbutner.github.io/ChessCoach/development-process... (including timelines, bugs and failures) Data: https://chrisbutner.github.io/ChessCoach/data.html (including raw measurements and tournament PGN files) And the code is here: https://github.com/chrisbutner/ChessCoach (C++ and Python, GPLv3 or later) Happy to answer any questions!
In Show HN: ChessCoach – A neural chess engine that comments on each player's moves

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