Cheating at chess with a computer for my shoes
Sat 30 July 2022
I have come up with a new way to win at chess:
I have connected up a Raspberry Pi Zero in my pocket to some buttons and vibration motors in my shoes,
so that I can surreptitiously communicate with a chess engine running on the Pi. The project is called "Sockfish" because
it's a way to operate Stockfish with your socks. Read more
Autopatzer: my automatic chess board
Wed 6 May 2020
My automatic chess board (the "Autopatzer") has reached the point where last night I was able to
play its first online game against a real person using lichess's Boards API. Read more
Automatic chess board design
Sat 14 March 2020
Lichess has recently released a Boards API, allowing anybody to
interface a physical chess board with lichess in order to play online games using an automatic board. I previously thought about implementing my Strange
Chess Clock using an automatic board, but never got round to it. With lichess now supporting online play with an automatic board, it's hard to justify not making one! Read more
My first chess tournament
Mon 24 June 2019
At the weekend, Bristol Grammar School played host to the June 2019 Bristol Chess Congress, the "13th Steve Boniface Memorial".
It's a 5-round Swiss tournament, with 3 sections: open (for international rated players), major (players with ECF grade
under 160), and minor (ECF grade under 120). Having never played in a rated tournament before, I don't have an ECF grade at all, so I was obviously in the minor section. Read more
A Strange Chess Clock
Thu 2 May 2019
A chess clock is a device that has 2 countdown timers, used to place a limit on each player's thinking time in a chess game. White's clock is counting
down while it's white's turn. After white plays his move, he hits the clock, and his clock pauses, and black's clock now counts down. Once black
has played a move, he hits the clock, and white's clock resumes counting down, and so on. Read more
Hiding messages in chess games
Tue 9 October 2018
I designed a steganography system that encodes data as a chess game.
A convenient way to communicate chess games is PGN,
but any means of communicating the moves of the game would work, as the information is encoded conceptually in the
moves themselves, rather than taking advantage of any redundancy in the PGN format. Read more
A 4x4 chess puzzle
Tue 28 August 2018
Playing Isopath a lot recently led to a broader interest
in board games, which led to me playing a lot of go,
and particularly chess (you can add me on lichess, but I'm not very
good). I had a look at some single-player
variants of chess and played "Hippodrome" a few times but found it very easy, however it gave me an
idea for another possibility. Read more
I designed a trick chess piece with hidden compartments
Sun 4 February 2018
It's quite easy to model a traditional chess piece (apart from a knight) using CAD software. You basically just have to draw a sketch of the outline and revolve
it around its centre. I modelled, and 3d printed, a Queen that includes some hidden compartments for storing small bits of paper, e.g. containing passwords or Bitcoin
keys. Read more