gofisch

An easy way to start playing Fischer Random/Chess960 chess.

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Inspiration

I got hooked on playing chess ever since the pandemic started. I wanted a way to play Fischer Random chess, but there was no convenient way to do so on any popular chess websites. Thus, I made my own website to help others more easily play Fischer Random chess.

You can see the live project here.

What is Fischer Random Chess?

Fischer Random chess, also known as Chess960, is a variation of chess invented by Bobby Fischer. The deviation from regular chess is that the starting position of the pieces on the back ranks is randomized following certain rules.

  • The bishops must be placed on opposite-colour squares
  • The King must be placed on a square between the rooks

Features

The first feature is the essence of Fischer Random chess, a variation of standard chess where the starting position of the pieces on the back ranks is randomized following certain rules. When users hit the randomize button, the sample starting position will be randomized

Next, users can play that specific randomized position in a game on Lichess.org, a popular online chess website. Before playing the game, users are able to change the initial amount of time for the chess, and the amount of time gained for each move played. When pressing play, a new tab will be opened on Lichess, and the user will be able to join the game, and can share the link with a friend to start the game.

Lastly, the FEN position, a way to represent a position on a chessboard, is always available to the user. The user can copy the FEN position to their clipboard and can use that FEN position on other chess websites or programs, such as on Chess.com.

How we built it

  • This project was bootstrapped with Create React App
  • Utilized the Lichess API for the open challenge creation
  • Used react-simple-chessboard for displaying the chessboard

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge that we ran into was using the Lichess API. Whenever we made a POST request to the API, we ended up getting a default response, as though the API wasn’t properly reading our request parameters.
After some trial and error, we figured out that we needed to use URL search params in our request to get a response that matched our request!

Accomplishments & What we learned

We’re proud of finishing the website in such a short time, and the fact that it is something that us and others would actually use. We learned that hackathons, and projects in general, are better done in a team, as the mix of ideas and skills really helps to make a better product!

Future

We plan to continue working on gofisch, to implement our own chess board so users can play from the starting position directly on our website!

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