pyChess

Two-player chess for the terminal, written in plain Python with no dependencies.

     A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H
   ┌────────────────────────┐
 8 │ ♜  ♞  ♝  ♛  ♚  ♝  ♞  ♜ │
 7 │ ♟  ♟  ♟  ♟  ♟  ♟  ♟  ♟ │
 6 │                        │
 5 │                        │
 4 │             ♟          │
 3 │                        │
 2 │ ♟  ♟  ♟  ♟     ♟  ♟  ♟ │
 1 │ ♜  ♞  ♝  ♛  ♚  ♝  ♞  ♜ │
   └────────────────────────┘

chess (Player 2)>

In the terminal the board is drawn with a checkered background; Player 1 (red) plays from rank 1 and moves first, Player 2 (blue) plays from rank 8.

Features

• Full piece movement rules, including castling, en passant and pawn promotion
• Check, checkmate and stalemate detection
• Draws by threefold repetition, the 50-move rule and insufficient material
• Save and load games
• Single file (pyChess.py), standard library only

Usage

Requires Python 3.9 or newer and a terminal with Unicode and ANSI color support.

git clone https://github.com/michaelkrisper/pyChess.git
cd pyChess
python3 pyChess.py

Commands

Command	Description
move FROM TO, mv FROM TO	Move a piece, e.g. mv e2 e4; castle by moving the king two squares (mv e1 g1)
setname NAME, sn NAME	Set the name of the current player
save FILE	Save the game
load FILE	Load a saved game
help, h	Show the command list
quit, q	Quit (Ctrl-D works too)

When a pawn reaches the last rank you are asked for the promotion piece (Q, R, B or N).

Save files use Python's pickle format; only load files you created yourself.

Development

pip install pytest ruff
pytest
ruff check .

CI runs both on every pull request. Every merge to main is tagged with the next patch version; bundled releases with release notes come from the Release workflow.

Contributing

Changes start with an issue and go through a pull request; see CONTRIBUTING.

License

MIT - see LICENSE.