Introduction

The goal the this project is to create a dedicated chess computer based on the Raspberry Pi, the Stockfish chess engine, the DGT eboard and DGT XL Clock or the Piface display.

This project mainly supports the Raspberry Pi (now with Piface and tablebase support). The ODROID-X is also supported for expert users. The Rikomagic MK 802 II is no longer supported. Old Rikomagic images are maintained for historical sake. Also, it's possible to run PicoChess on a desktop computer (Linux, OSX, Windows).

Picochess vs Slovenian GMs Top Slovenian GMs - (from left to right) GM Jure Škoberne, GM Luka Lenič, GM Duško Pavasović, and GM Matej Šebenik after a casual tag team session vs Picochess at Jonas's chess shop. Photo credit and thanks to Jonas Žnidaršič

Status

You can see a video of PicoChess running on a standard PC, and running on a MK802 II ARM key :-) Also, here is a video of PicoChess running on MK802 II and a bluetooth DGT eboard

Download and installation

Please refer to the installation section of our documentation.

Playing strength

This will be one of the strongest dedicated chess computer on the world :-) My initial testing on Rasperry Pi hardware versus a 4 core Intel i7 shows we have grandmaster strength.

Engine	Score	St
1: Stockfish on Pi	40,0/100	····················
2: Komodo3-64-sse	20,0/20	11111111111111111111
3: Pharaon	14,0/20	=1=1=101=110==110111
4: AnMon 5.75	11,0/20	==1=1110=010==011001
5: SOS 5.1 for Arena	10,5/20	10001=10100111=001=1
6: Gaia64	4,5/20	00100100010=00000100

100 games played / Tournament is finished - Level: Blitz 2/1 - Hardware: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2405S CPU @ 2.50GHz with 8,0 GB Memory

On a 802MK II device, stockfish is running 5 times faster ! And there is a lot of space (1GB) for the hastables. Picochess is the strongest on the O-Droidx (4 core ARM processor). You can also play with a remote chess engine (on a desktop PC or a 32-core amazon instance).

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the bluetooth DGT board supported ? Yes, but only in bluetooth mode. You need a USB to bluetooth adapter. If you are not using the piface version refer to Regular Bluetooth instructions. If you are using the piface version refer to Piface Bluetooth instructions.

Contact

You are encouraged to join the PicoChess mailing list, especially if you want to help for help testing or documenting. If you have new feature requests, send these to the mailing list too.

You have better chances to have quick answers on the PicoChess group, but you can also write us for all questions :