lichess-uci-bot

A bridge between Lichess API and UCI bots. Makes use of python-chess: https://github.com/niklasf/python-chess

How to Install

• Download the repo into lichess-uci-bot directory
• run pip install -r requirements.txt

Lichess OAuth

• Create an account for your bot on Lichess.org
• NOTE: If you have previously played games on an existing account, you will not be able to use it as a bot account
• Once your account has been created and you are logged in, go to: https://lichess.org/account/oauth/token
• Create an access token with the "Play bot moves" selected and add a description
• Click submit!
• A {token} e.g. stEstTokenLicHeSs will be displayed. Store this.
• NOTE: You won't see this token again.

Setup Engine

• create a engines directory in the lichess-uci-bot directory
• place your engine(s) in this directory

Config

• Edit the config.yml file and update the token field with your token
• In the engine field, enter the binary name
• Leave the weights field empty or see LeelaChessZero section for Neural Nets

Lichess Upgrade to Bot Account

This is irreversible. Read more about upgrading to bot account.

• run python main.py -u

LeelaChessZero

• Download the weights for the id you want to play from here: http://lczero.org/networks
• Extract the weights from the zip archive and rename it to latest.txt
• Download the lczero binary from here: https://github.com/glinscott/leela-chess/releases
• Copy both the files into the engines directory
• Change the engine and weights keys in config.yml to lczero and latest.txt
• You can specify the number of threads in the config.yml file as well
• To start: python main.py

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the Lichess team, especially T. Alexander Lystad and Thibault Duplessis for working with the LeelaChessZero team to get this API up. Thanks to the Niklas Fiekas and his python-chess code which allows UCI engine communication seamlessly.

License

lichess-uci-bot is licensed under the GPL 3 (or any later version at your option). Check out LICENSE.txt for the full text.