Free to play · no download · no loot boxes · your bot exports as a real engine
You never move a piece. You raise the engine that does — then export it and run it in Cute Chess, Arena or your own terminal. What you build here does not stay here.
One minute to start. No email, no download, no card.
Nothing here is a damage number with a chess skin. Raising Calculation buys search nodes and depth. Raising Tactics extends the quiescence horizon, which is exactly why a weak bot walks into two-move tricks. Positional Sense switches on evaluation terms; Endgame adds depth and the technique to convert. Training a bot is parameter tuning, with the compiling and the test harness taken care of.
Every match is played move by move by a genuine chess engine: alpha-beta search, transposition tables, quiescence, a tapered evaluation. What your bot’s attributes change is the engine itself — how deep it searches, how far its tactical horizon reaches, how often it blunders.
A low-Tactics bot resolves only the shallowest capture exchanges, so it walks into forks and two-move tricks a stronger bot sees instantly. A low Endgame wanders for dozens of moves before finding a mate it should deliver in ten. A weak bot is not a strong engine on low depth: it is a different player.
Each bot carries a stable seed that makes it misjudge the same positions the same way in every game. Two bots at identical ratings play nothing alike: one sacrifices on h7 and loses half its games spectacularly, the other trades into equal endings and grinds.
Turn energy and credits into permanent attribute growth. Every attribute has a hidden ceiling — its potential. Scouting reveals it.
Processors, memory, cooling, power supplies, neural modules and opening books. Each one changes a real engine parameter, not a damage number.
Spend instruction points mid-match: go for the attack, calculate deeply, trade and simplify. The engine actually obeys.
Eight divisions, Swiss and knockout tournaments, a season that resets and rewards.
Buy and sell bots on a market that grows with you. Untrained high-potential bots are the expensive ones — which is why scouting is worth paying for.
Watch a match move by move and spend instruction points as it happens: calculate deeply, go for the attack, trade and simplify. The engine obeys for the next several plies — the node budget really is multiplied, the king-attack weight really does rise. When the evaluation swings hard the game pauses and asks you, because that is the moment the decision is worth something.
Every bot exports as a readable genome file, and the included UCI adapter turns that file into a chess engine your computer will run: Arena, Cute Chess, Banksia, En Croissant, Nibbler. It plays exactly as it plays here, mistakes and personality included, so the bot you trained on a lunch break can enter a genuine engine tournament. Most web games end at the logout button. This one hands you the artefact.
node cbm-engine.mjs MYBOT.botxOne file, no install and no dependencies: download the engine, put it beside your exported bot, and run that line. Node 18 or newer is all it needs.
Yes. The whole game is playable without paying, and every token can be earned by playing. You may optionally buy tokens or a one-off Manager’s Licence to save time. There are no randomised paid rewards, no loot boxes and no gambling: every purchase states exactly what it contains before you pay.
No. You manage the bot; the bot plays. Knowing chess makes watching more fun and helps you read a position during a critical moment, but the game never asks you to find a move — unless you choose to spar against your own bot.
A manager name and a password, and that is it. No email, no real name, no age, no tracking, no analytics and no advertising. You can download or delete everything from Settings at any moment.
English, Spanish and Italian, including chess notation in each — figurine, localised letters or English letters.
Yes. The layout collapses to a single column with a bottom tab bar, and the board sizes itself to the viewport.