Chessnut Evo: The Future of Ultra Smart AI Chessboard

Hello chess enthusiasts!

It’s been two years since we presented our smart electronic chessboard, Chessnut Air.

Over the past two years, our team has invested all of our efforts into crafting the Chessnut product line, beginning with exhaustive research and development and continuing all the way to successful production. We have also listened to valuable feedback from our previous backers and customers to ensure that our product lineup aligns perfectly with their needs.

And now, we are absolutely thrilled to introduce you to our newest production: Chessnut Evo, a revolutionary ultra-smart AI chessboard!

Introducing Chessnut Evo, the ultimate all-in-one chessboard solution:

1. All-in-One Solution: Chessnut Evo combines various functionalities into a single platform for all your chess needs.
2. Powerful Engines: It comes with the latest Stockfish and popular personified chess engine, Maia, for advanced analysis and gameplay.
3. Customized Engine Generation: Customize your chess engine to match someone’s playing style using historical gameplay data.
4. Versatile Game Modes: Supports a wide range of game modes on popular platforms for flexibility and compatibility.
5. Colorful LED and Accurate Piece Recognition: Enhance gameplay and analysis with vibrant LED lights and precise piece recognition.
6. Third-Party App and Engine Support: Download and use third-party apps and engines for analysis and matches.
7. Ongoing Development: Chessnut Evo will continuously introduce new features and support more online platforms for greater user choice.

Chessnut Evo redefines the chessboard experience, providing unmatched functionality, customization, and ongoing innovation for chess enthusiasts.

We design Chessnut Evo to offer thrilling challenges for players of all levels. Whether you seek competition, training, or pure enjoyment, Chessnut Evo is your perfect chess partner and coach.   

ChessMind is a series of AI-based features and service modules built around Chessnut Evo. It offers advanced AI capabilities and services tailored to enhance the chess experience.

Chessnut Evo challenges players with a built-in human-like AI called Maia Chess. Maia uses advanced algorithms and machine learning techniques to analyze the board and make strategic moves that mimic the thought processes of a human player. It can adapt to your style of play and even learn from your mistakes, so you can improve your game with every match.  Chessnut Evo will be the world’s first truly deliverable chess computer that allows for local deployment of Maia.

You can take your chess skills to the next level by playing against an AI that thinks and plays like a human. This means you can enjoy a more challenging and engaging game of chess, whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned pro.

• MAIA VS Stockfish

“MAIA’s goal is to play the human move — not necessarily the best move. As a result, Maia has a more human-like style than previous engines, matching moves played by human players in online games over 50% of the time.”

Learn more about MAIA Engine here.

Our custom-built chess engine offers a solution that lets you generate customized AI opponents based on their actual chess history. By simply uploading their records, you can enjoy a personalized game tailored to their distinct playing style.

The training operations of the chess engine are extremely simple and straightforward.

*The training calculations are processed on the server (40-60 minutes) while Evo can freely engage in other activities.

•  AI Chess Partner for All Levels

• Tech Behind Custom AI

ChessMind’s training service utilizes Amazon’s GPU servers to train a neural network that mimics the playing style of specific chess players. The design of this neural network is similar to AlphaGo. We have trained hundreds of pre-trained networks, enabling users to achieve excellent performance in mimicking the playing style of their desired chess player with minimal data uploads.

Our team has conducted thorough testing and validation to ensure the accuracy and stability of the neural network. Through extensive data testing, our neural network has achieved an average accuracy rate of around 63%. This indicates that in numerous instances, our neural network will make decisions and moves that align with the playing style of specific chess players.

Check out this fascinating video from one of our fans who trained an engine!   (From his blog’s brief introduction: “As I showed in my video, after training on a small number of my games, two hundred, the virtualis bot played my usual openings for both White and Black, and these openings are unusual enough that it’s unlikely that the engine just played them as a fluke. Engines won’t usually play gambit lines unless explicitly programmed to do so.”)

An NPU-based Image Recognition and Control System for Electronic Chessboards.

Using a built-in NPU (neural processing unit) to achieve accurate image recognition and simulate human clicks, Chessnut Evo supports prevailing online chess platforms and applications, allowing you to play against opponents from all around the world while experiencing the traditional feel of a physical chessboard.

We have currently implemented integration with three platforms: Chess.com, Lichess and ChessKid.Unlike the approach taken in the Air/Pro app, Evo, powered by Chessnut Vision technology, supports a wider range of platforms and game modes, providing you with an enhanced experience. Our next step is to integrate with Chessable. We welcome your suggestions for further improvements, and we will prioritize training and adapting Chessnut Vision AI to the websites that receive more user demand.

• Chess.com

• Lichess.org

• ChessKid.com

• Chessable:

In the past, when electronic chessboards needed to operate on online platforms such as Lichess, Chess.com, etc., integration was dependent on the APIs provided by these platforms. However, this often resulted in limitations such as certain game modes (Puzzle, Tournament, short time games) being unavailable and platforms like ChessKid that do not offer open APIs unable to support the use of electronic chessboards.

Chessnut has developed Chessnut Vision for Chessnut Evo. It is an NPU-based Image Recognition and Control System. Simply put, it acts as the eyes of a person on the website, actively detecting and recognizing the “chessboard”. It then communicates the identified chess piece types and positions to Evo. Evo, in turn, feeds back the user’s moves to Chessnut Vision, simulating human clicks to control the movement of the pieces on the website. The entire process mimics the behavior of a human playing chess on the website, ensuring there is no risk of violating the policies of the online platform (of course, Chessnut does not provide assistance to users during their online gameplay).

Therefore, in theory, Evo can support all game modes on mainstream online platforms. 

Learning and analysis are crucial means for improving one’s chess skills. With the assistance of Chessnut Evo’s analysis system, you can receive real-time hints during your games to help you tackle challenging positions that you may not have been proficient in before. This allows you to understand your strengths and weaknesses and enables targeted improvement for further enhancement of your overall game.

In games against a chess engine or human opponents, you can enable real-time analysis during the match. It presents you with graphical feedback on the engine’s evaluation of each of your moves, helping you identify which moves influenced the outcome of the game. This valuable information allows you to understand the pivotal moments that determine victory or defeat.

Furthermore, you can take it a step further by enabling Evo’s Move Assistance feature. Based on ChessMind’s calculations, you can choose from the optimal move suggestions provided by different chess engines. There will be two different auxiliary modes that can be applied during local matches. 

Hint mode: When you pick up a chess piece, the colored LEDs on the chessboard will indicate the quality of your move (based on the engine you have selected), transitioning from green to red.

Coach Mode: You can set a specific time limit, such as 5 seconds. If you haven’t made any move within that time, Evo will analyze the board and suggest the best move based on the engine you have selected.

You can quickly save PGN files of your games from various platforms for later use with ChessMind for training and analysis. This allows users to conveniently manage their games played in different locations, whether on online platforms or over-the-board (OTB), and utilize them for further analysis and improvement.

Even more thrilling is the ability to directly watch live chess games on Evo through any website and save them into the board. This allows you to analyze the games at your convenience, regardless of your location or the time.

The highly reliable chess piece recognition technology ensures that every move is captured accurately, empowering you with the necessary data to enhance your gameplay. This feature is particularly beneficial for dedicated players seeking to analyze their games and acquire fresh perspectives on their strategies. 

Whether you’re playing for fun or competing at a professional level, Chessnut EVO’s dependable and accurate piece recognition ability serves as an invaluable asset for elevating your game to new heights.

Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned pro, Chessnut Evo has you covered! With Evo’s learn chess mode, career mode, and ELO rating, players of all levels can enjoy exciting challenges and improve their skills.

Evo offers beginners a chance to learn basic chess knowledge, explore chess openings, and solve chess puzzles through its built-in learning modes featuring three renowned platforms: Chess.com, Lichess, and ChessKid. In addition, the seven-color LED hint lights provide helpful guidance, while a real-time analytical chart tracks your progress. These innovative features enable you to elevate your chess skills on Lichess.org and other supported learning chess websites, empowering you to reach new heights and become a true master of the game.

Chessnut Evo introduces the Career Mode that takes your chess experience to the next level. Dive into the world of competitive chess and embark on a journey to enhance your skills, compete against renowned players, and climb up the rankings. Track your progress using the ELO rating system, earning experience points and unlocking exclusive rewards with each victory.

Chessnut is committed to maintaining an open development environment.

Since the release of Chessnut AIR in 2021, we have warmly welcomed third-party developers to integrate Chessnut hardware into their chess software. We have already collaborated with several app developers and we sincerely appreciate their contributions. 

With the launch of Chessnut Evo, we will continue to uphold our open principles and welcome developers to join us. In addition to developing hardware interfaces using the Chessnut Easylink SDK, services like ChessMind and Chessnut Vision will gradually be opened to developers. In fact, Chessnut Evo already has several third-party apps in development that will soon be available on our marketplace module. We look forward to bringing more excellent apps to chess lovers. 

In Chessnut Evo, there is a built-in push system where we will regularly send you updates on the most popular chess engines, puzzles, and even trending chess news.

Bid farewell to the inconvenience of connecting your chessboard to another device. Evo Chessboard offers a seamless standalone experience, enabling you to indulge in unrestricted gameplay on popular platforms like Chess.com, Lichess, and ChessKid without any mode limitations or the requirement of connecting to your phone or computer. Now you can fully immerse yourself in the game without any hassle, Evo grants you the freedom to enjoy chess on your terms, anytime, anywhere.