What is Human Chess

Ordinary chess programs, when you lower the level, play perfect moves mixed with random blunders: they never feel like a person. Human Chess uses Maia-3, a neural network trained on millions of real Lichess games, to pick the moves a player of the chosen level would really make, mistakes included. Stockfish, one of the strongest engines in the world, stands guard against the blunders that player would notice. Everything runs in your browser, free and without sign-up, on your phone too.

What you can do

Play the bot at seven levels, from beginner (~1100) to FIDE master (~2300), with different styles and time controls from bullet to classical.
Learn with Grandpa, a coach who explains threats, plans and tactics in plain words after your moves, and gives you a report card with an estimate of your level at the end.
Talk to Grandpa: ask "what should I do?", "why was that a mistake?", "can I castle?". An AI answers starting from Stockfish's analysis and from a library of 141 verified cards on openings, tactics, strategy, endgames, rules and chess history; first you get a hint, the move only if you insist.
Follow Grandpa's course: 9 units and 75 steps in order, from the rules to tactics, mates, openings and endgames. Grandpa also comments on the bot's moves ("careful, it threatens…"), can speak aloud, and your mistakes come back for review over the next days until you have learned them.
Take your first steps if you have never played: how each piece moves (collecting stars), the names of the squares and basic endgames against Stockfish.
Solve tactics puzzles: over 120,000 puzzles from the Lichess archive, rated 400 to 2900, also by theme (fork, pin, mate in 2…), with your own puzzle rating and a daily puzzle.
Learn from the champions: 55 famous games, from Morphy and Anderssen to Fischer, Kasparov and Carlsen, with Grandpa's comments; 14 are Capablanca games with his own notes. Replay them move by move, or play the champion's side and guess the moves.
Grandpa's middlegame plan: five steps on your own position (the kings, threats, your worst piece, the opponent's weaknesses, the plan) with arrows and coloured squares. Every suggested move is checked by Stockfish.
Opponents inspired by the champions: Morphy, Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Tal and Petrosian, with the openings from their real games and their style, at the level you choose.
Review the game move by move: evaluation graph, mistakes explained, best moves shown with arrows and the story of the game. You can also try your own lines by moving the pieces: Grandpa comments on them.
Review your Chess.com and Lichess games: type your username and Grandpa comments on them.
Learn openings (Italian, Ruy Lopez, Sicilian, French and more) by studying and practising against the replies humans really play.
Train your board vision: short exercises to spot undefended pieces, alignments (discovered attacks, pins, skewers), remember a position and choose candidate moves, with 12-minute sessions, review and a test. Solutions are computed and checked with Stockfish.
Challenge a friend online: send a link and play, with clock, draw offers and rematch.
Run a tournament with friends: a round-robin for your WhatsApp group or club (3 to 10 players), with online games played in rounds, pairings, standings and ready-made messages to send. You join with a nickname, no sign-up.
Install it as an app on your phone or computer: against the bot it works offline too.
Track your progress: level over time, best and worst openings, 22 achievements to unlock. And share a position as an image or a game as a link, play with premoves, move confirmation, typed moves or blindfold.
Set up a position by hand to study it, save your games, export them as PGN, play in 2D or 3D and connect the Chessnut Air electronic board.

Frequently asked questions

Is it free? Yes, with no ads and no account.

How strong is the bot? You choose the level: each level is tuned to play and blunder like a human player of that rating.

Does it work on my phone? Yes, in any modern browser (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge) on computers, tablets and smartphones. You can also install it as an app with the "📱 Install the app" button (on iPhone: Share → "Add to Home Screen").

Does it work offline? Yes, against the bot, after your first visit: the neural networks and the engine run on your device. Only the Grandpa chat, online games and the Chess.com/Lichess import need internet.

Do my games go to a server? No: games against the bot and your archive stay in your browser, unless you choose to turn on the online copy from the "Backup" window. Online games go through our server and are deleted after 3 days; chat questions go through an AI service (privacy).

Human instinct: Maia-3 (CSSLab, University of Toronto, AGPL-3.0, text), trained on real Lichess games, with the Maia-1 networks as fallback · Guard engine: Stockfish.js · Maia-1 and Stockfish licensed under GPL-3.0 (text, file provenance). Opening names: lichess chess-openings (CC0). Tactics puzzles: Lichess puzzle database (CC0). · 2D pieces: Colin M.L. Burnett's "cburnett" set (GPLv2+) · 3D set: James Clarke's Staunton-Pieces (MIT; licences and provenance) · 3D renderer: three.js (MIT). Optional: Jev by TypeSafe, which also helps Grandpa decide when to speak. · Master games: moves from pgnmentor.com and Wikipedia, Grandpa's comments written for the game. The 14 Capablanca games: notes from his book Chess Fundamentals (1921, Project Gutenberg).