Real Time Chess – A physical chess board without the concept of turns
45 comments
·March 29, 2025misprit7
paladin314159
I love it! I'm the one who recreated Kung Fu Chess at kfchess.com. Very impressed at you bringing it to life -- definitely at least 100x harder to do :)
sparky_z
Does the system of electromagnets do anything to enforce legal vs illegal moves? Seems like another way for your untrustworthy friends to cheat. When your opponent's distracted, just put your queen anywhere you like.
Also, is there a rule about moving one piece at a time? I was surprised I didn't see anyone two-handing it. If it were me, my opening move would be to grab 4 pawns at one (2 in each hand) and shifting them all forward two spaces. That would have been my first instinct.
misprit7
No. The intention with the electromagnets wasn't really to prevent malicious cheating, just mostly to enforce cooldowns since it's very easy to forget/miss the different color of lights. The games are generally very chaotic and due to user error there are usually a few incorrect touches throughout the game that have to be quickly corrected manually anyways, so enforcing legal moves wouldn't make the experience better.
As for moving multiple pieces at once, the rule I have is only one hand and one piece at a time. This goes a long way towards preventing accidental bumps into other pieces and weird board states where there are multiple pieces in the process of being moved at once.
joymonger
I'd agree that the video is much more captivating. It's really an incredible and innovative piece of hardware. I am curious, did you ever arrange a meetup with Magnus?
Mekaniko
Cool thing.
How do you handle the interaction between 2 pieces being moved at the same time ? Can I dodge a capture by picking up a piece ? Say 2 rooks are facing each other, how do you handle a mutual capture attempt ?
I have solved this problem, but still in a turn based setting :
* Both player choose their move, and moves are resolved simultaneously
* A piece cannot be moved 2 turns in a row (discrete cooldown time)
* When 2 pieces land at the same place, they are both considered captured.
* If they move in straight lines, in opposite direction, they are also both captured.
* NO CAPTURE for pieces crossing each other path / knights can exchange their positions.
* No pat. A player can skip his turn.
* the goal is to capture the oposite king obviosuly, not to checkmake it.
With a low blitz time, it solves the same fundamental problem as RT chess, but it can only be played online.
From a few test game, it looks like basic chess structure is preserved. But then there is the question of finding the Nash equilibirum of the game ! 2by2-simultaneous-move-chess with both rook and king leads to some sort of rock-paper-scissor.
j_bum
I loved your video when YouTube recommended it several months back!!
Congrats on such a cool build and for making the front page.
time0ut
Very cool. I also really enjoyed your Terraria wiring computer and the wiring mod you made. Keep it up!
misprit7
Thanks!
publicola1990
The transcript of the video doesn't really work that well as the intro text in GitHub. The tone of it feels haughty, before even it has entered into the main details of the project. My suggestion is to rewrite it toning down the things that work on video but not as standalone text.
alwa
For what it’s worth, I didn’t find it “haughty” or tonally inappropriate at all (I thought it was fun and cute, and the right kind of unserious tone for a hacking-for-fun project).
If we’re doing a line-level read, though, it did take me a lot of reading to understand what the project was. Nothing that couldn’t be addressed with one more massage of your subhead “a physical chess board without the concept of turns”!
Super cool project, incredible execution, and you’re so personable—thank you for this work and your video!
akrotkov
I spent hundreds of hours 20 years ago playing Kung Fu Chess[1], which was the (first?) online version of this concept. That was a fun time.
The physical board and magnets definitely add a cool factor to it as does the physical dexterity element. Nice project!
ece
The Wikipedia page mentions the Chezz app, and it's available and fun. Reminds me of really bad chess too.
null
xg15
> so this should be a pretty uncontroversial minor rules update
My kind of humor.
Always found it an interesting aspect of chess that the most "common sense" rules (Players take turns; no skipping; one move per turn) result in the most unintuitive outcomes and a massive increase in complexity: Suddenly you can reason about the pieces a player won't be able to move in a turn, you can double-bind players, you get draws where its provably impossible for any player to win, etc.
(In that sense, chess is a bit like the IntercalScript language earlier today: All features are superficially reasonable and in the service of simplicity, yet result in the weirdest outcomes)
Wouldn't all this be gone for chess without turns?
Or would strategies become even more intricate, e.g. taking into account the minimum time you'd require to physically move a piece?
NhanH
The strategies will change, but it is not certain to be more “intricate”, it could go both way.
It is probably more likely that adding the other physical limitation of the human body causes one strategy to be vastly more effective, and the game becomes less intricate. The reason is fairly simple: a game does not become “intricate” or “interesting” by accident. We iterated through a lot variations before we settled down on this version of chess that has the suitable intricacy for us. Adding a new factor probably needs a couple more decades/ centuries of refinement before we get to a version that has similar property to the current one.
The similar situation in Starcraft: for machines that plays the game, certain units just become the only way to play (mostly long range high damage units). Human can’t choose 100 targets at once, machines can. If you balance the game for machines, then those units would be useless for human players
hossbeast
In addition to the per-piece cool downs, there should be a per-playet global cooldow of say 10 seconds
xg15
Maybe.
My first thought was that this would essentially devolve to speed chess, because any player who waited longer to move than their cooldown would put themself at a disadvantage.
But I think there is a strategic property that could make the game interesting, namely the "phase shift" between the players' turns: When the cooldowns are interleaved, the game becomes turn-based speed chess. But when the cooldowns sync up, you might get something Diplomacy-like, where both players have 10 seconds to guess the other's next move, then both will move almost simultaneously.
This shift will slowly change throughout the game and can even be changed intentionally if one player waits longer with their turn than they'd have to.
JumpCrisscross
> you can reason about the pieces a player won't be able to move in a turn
Zugzwang [1].
(Also works if you get blessed with a competitor who acts impulsively when confused or flustered.)
pimlottc
> Wouldn't all this be gone for chess without turns?
The video goes into this a little bit. Turns out forking isn’t that useful since your opponent can just move both pieces!
dullcrisp
If you like the humor you should watch the linked video!
vlovich123
For those wondering how the players could take pieces during the cool down, you’re allowed to move your opponent’s piece because you wear a strap with different frequencies (500hz and 750hz) which lets the board know who is and isn’t allowed to move a piece.
Mekaniko
Cool thing.
How do you handle the interaction between 2 pieces being moved at the same time ? Can I dodge a capture by picking up a piece ? Say 2 rooks are facing each other, how do you handle a mutual capture attempt ?
I have solved this problem, but still in a turn based setting :
* Both player choose their move, and moves are resolved simultaneously
* A piece cannot be moved 2 turns in a row (discrete cooldown time)
* When 2 pieces land at the same place, they are both considered captured.
* If they move in straight lines, in opposite direction, they are also both captured.
* NO CAPTURE for pieces crossing each other path / knights can exchange their positions.
* No pat. A player can skip his turn.
* the goal is to capture the oposite king obviosuly, not to checkmake it.
With a low blitz time, it solves the same fundamental problem as RT chess, but it can only be played online.
From a few test game, it looks like basic chess structure is preserved. But then there is the question of finding the Nash equilibirum of the game ! 2by2-simultaneous-move-chess with both rook and king leads to some sort of rock-paper-scissor.
Aperocky
Highly suggest to check out his homepage: https://github.com/misprit7, as its not the first time I've seen his project up here (and deservedly so!), his foosbar machine was definitely worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrwXZXGiP1w
As a fellow engineer, I am in awe - I wonder what his full time colleagues think when he walks in as an intern with that kind of github presence.
rideontime
Don't miss the linked video on YouTube, the first 30 seconds had me hooked. Very impressive project and production values to match.
vunderba
There was a demo from around 5+ years ago of a experimental real-time Chess board which looked remarkably similar. Once a piece was moved, a visible circular timer with a duration proportional to the piece valuation would count down until they were allowed to move the piece again.
I wish I could find the link but trying to search YT for relevant results older than a couple years is just trash.
hnlmorg
Could it be the Kung Fu Chess games mentioned in the video?
null
null
mnky9800n
Why is ass and anal bolded in the readme? The git blame says you did it. Haha.
meowface
It refers to a player accused of cheating against Magnus Carlsen, with widespread speculation that the cheating might've been done using an anal vibrator.
(There's zero evidence it actually was an anal device; no one knows how he might've cheated if he indeed cheated. It just became a big meme.)
mtlmtlmtlmtl
Hans Niemann almost certainly did not cheat against Carlsen. Carlsen just played that game rather poorly and ragequit the tournament because he's a baby who can't handle losing.
I do think Niemann may have cheated in OTB chess before. But not at the Sinquefield Cup, I just don't see it. And the only evidence is insinuations from a sore loser who's well known for throwing tantrums when he doesn't get his way.
The buttplug stuff was really just a joke from reddit, no one's seriously suggested anyone is actually cheating using a buttplug. Doesn't even make sense as a way of cheating, really. It would be extremely obvious.
verteu
He made a great move in the game, but completely mis-analyzed the reason it works during the post-game interview [1]. Several GMs found that suspicious, especially given revelations that he'd previously admitted to cheating.
Specifically, move 19. Qd3! [2], appears to hang the knight. When asked how he'd respond if his opponent simply took the knight (19... dxc4), he says he is "completely winning", then proceeds to give some moves that lead to a flat-out losing position. (Eg: Any GM or sufficiently strong engine agrees that r2q1rk1/1pbn1p2/2p1b1pB/p3P3/P1p2P2/2P3QP/1P4P1/3RRBK1 b - - 0 1 is lost for White.)
To be fair, he's been playing incredibly well recently, and no other evidence of cheating came out, so I'm inclined to believe it was just a "bad interview."
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI9jAU0jhJU
[2] https://www.chess.com/events/2022-sinquefield-cup/04/Niemann...
olddustytrail
Hans Niemann almost certainly did cheat against Carlsen. Everyone who knows about chess found that game hugely suspicious (see Hikaru's comments on it).
The idea that Carlsen can't stand losing is a theory from people who don't know about chess. His lose rate is about 15%. All GMs lose games all the time. It's keeping the win rate as high as possible that makes them the best.
The notion that any GM would get so upset simply about losing a single game is just nonsense.
xg15
I think it's a nod to the controversy he alluded to in the previous sentences, which exposed some more unorthodox cheating strategies. You can read about it in the link.
iwontberude
I think the ass speaks for itself
gus_massa
Is it possible to make the squares sligtly conical (like a dinner plate) with the magnet at the bottom, so the pieces are aligned naturaly in the center when they land?
mollerhoj
Highest rated youtube comment: "Send us a board and we’ll make a video of Magnus Carlsen playing on it! We’ll cover your expenses of course."
Man that'd be fun to watch
Hey, I'm the one who made this! My video on it probably does a better job of explaining it than the github so I'd recommend checking that out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7VtSK23_Jg
If anyone has any questions about the engineering process/game itself I'd be happy to answer.