lichess-bot

A bridge between Lichess Bot API and bots.

How to Install

Mac/Linux:

• NOTE: Only Python 3.9 or later is supported!
• Download the repo into lichess-bot directory.
• Navigate to the directory in cmd/Terminal: cd lichess-bot.
• Install pip: apt install python3-pip.
  • In non-Ubuntu distros, replace apt with the correct package manager (pacman in Arch, dnf in Fedora, brew in Mac, etc.), package name, and installation command.
• Install virtualenv: apt install python3-virtualenv.
• Setup virtualenv: apt install python3-venv.

python3 -m venv venv # If this fails you probably need to add Python3 to your PATH.
virtualenv venv -p python3
source ./venv/bin/activate
python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt

• Copy config.yml.default to config.yml.
• Edit the variants: supported_variants and time controls: supported_tc from the config.yml file as necessary.

Windows:

• NOTE: Only Python 3.9 or later is supported!
• If needed, install Python:
  • Download Python here.
  • When installing, enable "add Python to PATH".
  • If the Python version is at least 3.10, a default local install works.
  • If the Python version is 3.9, choose "Custom installation", keep the defaults on the Optional Features page, and choose "Install for all users" in the Advanced Options page.
• Start Terminal, PowerShell, cmd, or your preferred command prompt.
• Upgrade pip: python -m pip install --upgrade pip.
• Download the repo into lichess-bot directory.
• Navigate to the directory: cd [folder's address] (for example, cd C:\Users\username\repos\lichess-bot).
• Install virtualenv: pip install virtualenv.
• Setup virtualenv:

python -m venv venv # If this fails you probably need to add Python3 to your PATH.
venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

PowerShell note: If the activate command does not work in PowerShell, execute Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned first and choose Y there (you may need to run Powershell as administrator). After you execute the script, change execution policy back with Set-ExecutionPolicy Restricted and pressing Y.

• Copy config.yml.default to config.yml.
• Edit the variants: supported_variants and time controls: supported_tc from the config.yml file as necessary (use "#" to disable certain ones).

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, create a personal OAuth2 token with the "Play games with the bot API" (bot:play) scope selected and a description added.
• A token (e.g. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) will be displayed. Store this in the config.yml file as the token field. You can also set the token in the environment variable $LICHESS_BOT_TOKEN.
• NOTE: You won't see this token again on Lichess, so do save it.

Setup Engine

Within the file config.yml:

• Enter the directory containing the engine executable in the engine: dir field.
• Enter the executable name in the engine: name field (In Windows you may need to type a name with ".exe", like "lczero.exe")
• If you want the engine to run in a different directory (e.g., if the engine needs to read or write files at a certain location), enter that directory in the engine: working_dir field.
  • If this field is blank or missing, the current directory will be used.
  • IMPORTANT NOTE: If this field is used, the running engine will look for files and directories (Syzygy tablebases, for example) relative to this path, not the directory where lichess-bot was launched. Files and folders specified with absolute paths are unaffected.
• Leave the weights field empty or see LeelaChessZero section for Neural Nets

As an optional convenience, there is a folder named engines within the lichess-bot folder where you can copy your engine and all the files it needs. This is the default executable location in the config.yml.default file.

Engine Configuration

Besides the above, there are many possible options within config.yml for configuring the engine for use with lichess-bot.

• protocol: Specify which protocol your engine uses. Choices are
  1. "uci" for the Universal Chess Interface
  2. "xboard" for the XBoard/WinBoard/Chess Engine Communication Protocol
  3. "homemade" if you want to write your own engine in Python within lichess-bot. See Creating a homemade bot below.
• ponder: Specify whether your bot will ponder--i.e., think while the bot's opponent is choosing a move.
• polyglot: Tell lichess-bot whether your bot should use an opening book. Multiple books can be specified for each chess variant.
  • enabled: Whether to use the book at all.
  • book: A nested list of books. The next indented line should list a chess variant (standard, 3check, horde, etc.) followed on succeeding indented lines with paths to the book files. See config.yml.default for examples.
  • min_weight: The minimum weight or quality a move must have if it is to have a chance of being selected. If a move cannot be found that has at least this weight, no move will be selected.
  • selection: The method for selecting a move. The choices are: "weighted_random" where moves with a higher weight/quality have a higher probability of being chosen, "uniform_random" where all moves of sufficient quality have an equal chance of being chosen, and "best_move" where the move with the highest weight is always chosen.
  • max_depth: The maximum number of moves a bot plays before it stops consulting the book. If max_depth is 3, then the bot will stop consulting the book after its third move.
• draw_or_resign: This section allows your bot to resign or offer/accept draw based on the evaluation by the engine. XBoard engines can resign and offer/accept draw without this feature enabled.
  • resign_enabled: Whether the bot is allowed to resign based on the evaluation.
  • resign_score: The engine evaluation has to be less than or equal to resign_score for the bot to resign.
  • resign_for_egtb_minus_two: If true the bot will resign in positions where the online_egtb returns a wdl of -2.
  • resign_moves: The evaluation has to be less than or equal to resign_score for resign_moves amount of moves for the bot to resign.
  • offer_draw_enabled: Whether the bot is allowed to offer/accept draw based on the evaluation.
  • offer_draw_score: The absolute value of the engine evaluation has to be less than or equal to offer_draw_score for the bot to offer/accept draw.
  • offer_draw_for_egtb_zero: If true the bot will offer/accept draw in positions where the online_egtb returns a wdl of 0.
  • offer_draw_moves: The absolute value of the evaluation has to be less than or equal to offer_draw_score for offer_draw_moves amount of moves for the bot to offer/accept draw.
  • offer_draw_pieces: The bot only offers/accepts draws if the position has less than or equal to offer_draw_pieces pieces.
• online_moves: This section gives your bot access to various online resources for choosing moves like opening books and endgame tablebases. This can be a supplement or a replacement for chess databases stored on your computer. There are three sections that correspond to three different online databases:
  1. chessdb_book: Consults a Chinese chess position database, which also hosts a xiangqi database.
  2. lichess_cloud_analysis: Consults Lichess's own position analysis database.
  3. online_egtb: Consults either the online Syzygy 7-piece endgame tablebase hosted by Lichess or the chessdb listed above.
  • max_out_of_book_moves: Stop using online opening books after they don't have a move for max_out_of_book_moves positions. Doesn't apply to the online endgame tablebases.
  • max_retries: The maximum amount of retries when getting an online move.
  • Configurations common to all:
    • enabled: Whether to use the database at all.
    • min_time: The minimum time in seconds on the game clock necessary to allow the online database to be consulted.
    • move_quality: Choice of "all" (chessdb_book only), "good", "best", or "suggest" (online_egtb only).
      • all: Choose a random move from all legal moves.
      • best: Choose only the highest scoring move.
      • good: Choose randomly from the top moves. In lichess_cloud_analysis, the top moves list is controlled by max_score_difference. In chessdb_book, the top list is controlled by the online source.
      • suggest: Let the engine choose between the top moves. The top moves are the all the moves that "good" could have returned. Can't be used with XBoard engines.
  • Configurations only in chessdb_book and lichess_cloud_analysis:
    • min_depth: The minimum search depth for a move evaluation for a database move to be accepted.
  • Configurations only in lichess_cloud_analysis:
    • max_score_difference: When move_quality is set to "good", this option specifies the maximum difference between the top scoring move and any other move that will make up the set from which a move will be chosen randomly. If this option is set to 25 and the top move in a position has a score of 100, no move with a score of less than 75 will be returned.
    • min_knodes: The minimum number of kilonodes to search. The minimum number of nodes to search is this value times 1000.
  • Configurations only in online_egtb:
    • max_pieces: The maximum number of pieces in the current board for which the tablebase will be consulted.
    • source: One of chessdb or lichess. Lichess also has tablebases for atomic and antichess while chessdb only has those for standard.
• lichess_bot_tbs: This section gives your bot access to various resources for choosing moves like syzygy and gaviota endgame tablebases. There are two sections that correspond to two different endgame tablebases:
  1. syzygy: Get moves from syzygy tablebases. .*tbw have to be always provided. Syzygy TBs are generally smaller that gaviota TBs.
  2. gaviota: Get moves from gaviota tablebases.
  • Configurations common to all:
    • enabled: Whether to use the tablebases at all.
    • paths: The paths to the tablebases.
    • max_pieces: The maximum number of pieces in the current board for which the tablebase will be consulted.
    • move_quality: Choice of "good", or "best".
      • best: Choose only the highest scoring move. When using syzygy, if .*tbz files are not provided, the bot will attempt to get a move using move_quality = good.
      • good: Choose randomly from the top moves.
      • suggest: Let the engine choose between the top moves. The top moves are the all the moves that "good" could have returned. Can't be used with XBoard engines.
  • Configurations only in gaviota:
    • min_dtm_to_consider_as_wdl_1: The minimum DTM to consider as syzygy WDL=1/-1. Setting it to 100 will disable it.
• engine_options: Command line options to pass to the engine on startup. For example, the config.yml.default has the configuration

  engine_options:
    cpuct: 3.1

This would create the command-line option --cpuct=3.1 to be used when starting the engine, like this for the engine lc0: lc0 --cpuct=3.1. Any number of options can be listed here, each getting their own command-line option.

• uci_options: A list of options to pass to a UCI engine after startup. Different engines have different options, so treat the options in config.yml.default as templates and not suggestions. When UCI engines start, they print a list of configurations that can modify their behavior after receiving the string "uci". For example, to find out what options Stockfish 13 supports, run the executable in a terminal, type uci, and press Enter. The engine will print the following when run at the command line:

id name Stockfish 13
id author the Stockfish developers (see AUTHORS file)

option name Debug Log File type string default
option name Contempt type spin default 24 min -100 max 100
option name Analysis Contempt type combo default Both var Off var White var Black var Both
option name Threads type spin default 1 min 1 max 512
option name Hash type spin default 16 min 1 max 33554432
option name Clear Hash type button
option name Ponder type check default false
option name MultiPV type spin default 1 min 1 max 500
option name Skill Level type spin default 20 min 0 max 20
option name Move Overhead type spin default 10 min 0 max 5000
option name Slow Mover type spin default 100 min 10 max 1000
option name nodestime type spin default 0 min 0 max 10000
option name UCI_Chess960 type check default false
option name UCI_AnalyseMode type check default false
option name UCI_LimitStrength type check default false
option name UCI_Elo type spin default 1350 min 1350 max 2850
option name UCI_ShowWDL type check default false
option name SyzygyPath type string default <empty>
option name SyzygyProbeDepth type spin default 1 min 1 max 100
option name Syzygy50MoveRule type check default true
option name SyzygyProbeLimit type spin default 7 min 0 max 7
option name Use NNUE type check default true
option name EvalFile type string default nn-62ef826d1a6d.nnue
uciok

Any of the names following option name can be listed in uci_options in order to configure the Stockfish engine.

  uci_options:
    Move Overhead: 100
    Skill Level: 10

The exceptions to this are the options uci_chess960, uci_variant, multipv, and ponder. These will be handled by lichess-bot after a game starts and should not be listed in config.yml. Also, if an option is listed under uci_options that is not in the list printed by the engine, it will cause an error when the engine starts because the engine won't understand the option. The word after type indicates the expected type of the options: string for a text string, spin for a numeric value, check for a boolean True/False value.

One last option is go_commands. Beneath this option, arguments to the UCI go command can be passed. For example,

  go_commands:
    nodes: 1
    depth: 5
    movetime: 1000

will append nodes 1 depth 5 movetime 1000 to the command to start thinking of a move: go startpos e2e4 e7e5 ....

• xboard_options: A list of options to pass to an XBoard engine after startup. Different engines have different options, so treat the options in config.yml.default as templates and not suggestions. When XBoard engines start, they print a list of configurations that can modify their behavior. To see these configurations, run the engine in a terminal, type xboard, press Enter, type protover 2, and press Enter. The configurable options will be prefixed with feature option. Some examples may include

feature option="Add Noise -check VALUE"
feature option="PGN File -string VALUE"
feature option="CPU Count -spin VALUE MIN MAX"

Any of the options can be listed under xboard_options in order to configure the XBoard engine.

  xboard_options:
    Add Noise: False
    PGN File: lichess_games.pgn
    CPU Count: 1

The exceptions to this are the options multipv, and ponder. These will be handled by lichess-bot after a game starts and should not be listed in config.yml. Also, if an option is listed under xboard_options that is not in the list printed by the engine, it will cause an error when the engine starts because the engine won't know how to handle the option. The word prefixed with a hyphen indicates the expected type of the options: -string for a text string, -spin for a numeric value, -check for a boolean True/False value.

One last option is go_commands. Beneath this option, commands prior to the go command can be passed. For example,

  go_commands:
    depth: 5

will precede the go command to start thinking with sd 5. The other go_commands list above for UCI engines (nodes and movetime) are not valid for XBoard engines and will detrimentally affect their time control.

• abort_time: How many seconds to wait before aborting a game due to opponent inaction. This only applies during the first six moves of the game.

• fake_think_time: Artificially slow down the engine to simulate a person thinking about a move. The amount of thinking time decreases as the game goes on.

• rate_limiting_delay: For extremely fast games, the lichess.org servers may respond with an error if too many moves are played too quickly. This option avoids this problem by pausing for a specified number of milliseconds after submitting a move before making the next move.

• move_overhead: To prevent losing on time due to network lag, subtract this many milliseconds from the time to think on each move.

• correspondence These options control how the engine behaves during correspondence games.

  • move_time: How many seconds to think for each move.
  • checkin_period: How often (in seconds) to reconnect to games to check for new moves after disconnecting.
  • disconnect_time: How many seconds to wait after the bot makes a move for an opponent to make a move. If no move is made during the wait, disconnect from the game.
  • ponder: Whether the bot should ponder during the above waiting period.

• challenge: Control what kind of games for which the bot should accept challenges. All of the following options must be satisfied by a challenge to be accepted.

  • concurrency: The maximum number of games to play simultaneously.
  • sort_by: Whether to start games by the best rated/titled opponent "best" or by first-come-first-serve "first".
  • accept_bot: Whether to accept challenges from other bots.
  • only_bot: Whether to only accept challenges from other bots.
  • max_increment: The maximum value of time increment.
  • min_increment: The minimum value of time increment.
  • max_base: The maximum base time for a game.
  • min_base: The minimum base time for a game.
  • max_days: The maximum number of days for a correspondence game.
  • min_days: The minimum number of days for a correspondence game.
  • variants: An indented list of chess variants that the bot can handle.

  variants:
    - standard
    - horde
    - antichess
    # etc.

• time_controls: An indented list of acceptable time control types from bullet to correspondence.

  time_controls:
    - bullet
    - blitz
    - rapid
    - classical
    - correspondence

• modes: An indented list of acceptable game modes (rated and/or casual).

  modes:
    -rated
    -casual

• block_list: An indented list of usernames from which the challenges are always declined. If this option is not present, then the list is considered empty.
• recent_bot_challenge_age: Maximum age of a bot challenge to be considered recent in seconds
• max_recent_bot_challenges: Maximum number of recent challenges that can be accepted from the same bot
• greeting: Send messages via chat to the bot's opponent. The string {me} will be replaced by the bot's lichess account name. The string {opponent} will be replaced by the opponent's lichess account name. Any other word between curly brackets will be removed. If you want to put a curly bracket in the message, use two: {{ or }}.
  • hello: Message to send to the opponent when the bot makes its first move.
  • goodbye: Message to send to the opponent once the game is over.
  • hello_spectators: Message to send to the spectators when the bot makes its first move.
  • goodbye_spectators: Message to send to the spectators once the game is over.

  greeting:
    hello: Hi, {opponent}! I'm {me}. Good luck!
    goodbye: Good game!
    hello_spectators: "Hi! I'm {me}. Type !help for a list of commands I can respond to." # Message to send to spectator chat at the start of a game
    goodbye_spectators: "Thanks for watching!" # Message to send to spectator chat at the end of a game

• pgn_directory: Write a record of every game played in PGN format to files in this directory. Each bot move will be annotated with the bot's calculated score and principal variation. The score is written with a tag of the form [%eval s,d], where s is the score in pawns (positive means white has the advantage), and d is the depth of the search. Each game will be written to a uniquely named file.

  pgn_directory: "game_records"

• matchmaking: Challenge a random bot.
  • allow_matchmaking: Whether to challenge other bots.
  • challenge_variant: The variant for the challenges. If set to random a variant from the ones enabled in challenge.variants will be chosen at random.
  • challenge_timeout: The time (in minutes) the bot has to be idle before it creates a challenge.
  • challenge_initial_time: A list of initial times (in seconds and to be chosen at random) for the challenges.
  • challenge_increment: A list of increments (in seconds and to be chosen at random) for the challenges.
  • challenge_days: A list of number of days for a correspondence challenge (to be chosen at random).
  • opponent_min_rating: The minimum rating of the opponent bot. The minimum rating in lichess is 600.
  • opponent_max_rating: The maximum rating of the opponent bot. The maximum rating in lichess is 4000.
  • opponent_rating_difference: The maximum difference between the bot's rating and the opponent bot's rating.
  • opponent_allow_tos_violation: Whether to challenge bots that violated Lichess Terms of Service. Note that even rated games against them will not affect ratings.
  • challenge_mode: Possible options are casual, rated and random.
  • challenge_filter: Whether and how to prevent challenging a bot after that bot declines a challenge. Options are none, coarse, and fine.
    • none does not prevent challenging a bot that declined a challenge.
    • coarse will prevent challenging a bot to any type of game after it declines one challenge.
    • fine will prevent challenging a bot to the same kind of game that was declined.
  • block_list: An indented list of usernames of bots that will not be challenged. If this option is not present, then the list is considered empty.

If there are entries for both real-time (challenge_initial_time and/or challenge_increment) and correspondence games (challenge_days), the challenge will be a random choice between the two.

If there are entries for both absolute ratings (opponent_min_rating and opponent_max_rating) and rating difference (opponent_rating_difference), the rating difference takes precedence.

The challenge_filter option can be useful if your matchmaking settings result in a lot of declined challenges. The bots that accept challenges will be challenged more often than those that have declined. The filter will remain until lichess-bot quits or the connection with lichess.org is reset.

matchmaking:
  allow_matchmaking: false
  challenge_variant: "random"
  challenge_timeout: 30
  challenge_initial_time: 
    - 60
    - 120
  challenge_increment: 
    - 1
    - 2
  challenge_days: 
     - 1
     - 2
# opponent_min_rating: 600
# opponent_max_rating: 4000
  opponent_rating_difference: 100
  opponent_allow_tos_violation: true
  challenge_mode: "random"
  challenge_filter: none

Lichess Upgrade to Bot Account

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

• run python3 lichess-bot.py -u.

To Run

After activating the virtual environment created in the installation steps (the source line for Linux and Macs or the activate script for Windows), run

python3 lichess-bot.py

The working directory for the engine execution will be the lichess-bot directory. If your engine requires files located elsewhere, make sure they are specified by absolute path or copy the files to an appropriate location inside the lichess-bot directory.

To output more information (including your engine's thinking output and debugging information), the -v option can be passed to lichess-bot:

python3 lichess-bot.py -v

If you want to record the output to a log file, add the -l or --logfile along with a file name:

python3 lichess-bot.py --logfile log.txt

To Quit

• Press CTRL+C.
• It may take some time to quit.

LeelaChessZero: Mac/Linux

• Download the weights for the id you want to play from here.
• Extract the weights from the zip archive and rename it to latest.txt.
• For Mac/Linux, build the lczero binary yourself following LeelaChessZero/lc0/README.
• Copy both the files into the engine.dir directory.
• Change the engine.name and engine.engine_options.weights keys in config.yml file to lczero and weights.pb.gz.
• You can specify the number of engine.uci_options.threads in the config.yml file as well.
• To start: python3 lichess-bot.py.

LeelaChessZero: Windows CPU 2021

• For Windows modern CPUs, download the lczero binary from the latest Lc0 release (e.g. lc0-v0.27.0-windows-cpu-dnnl.zip).
• Unzip the file, it comes with lc0.exe , dnnl.dll, and a weights file example, 703810.pb.gz (amongst other files).
• All three main files need to be copied to the engines directory.
• The lc0.exe should be doubleclicked and the windows safesearch warning about it being unsigned should be cleared (be careful and be sure you have the genuine file).
• Change the engine.name key in the config.yml file to lc0.exe, no need to edit the config.yml file concerning the weights file as the lc0.exe will use whatever *.pb.gz is in the same folder (have only one *pb.gz file in the engines directory).
• To start: python3 lichess-bot.py.

LeelaChessZero: Docker container

Use https://github.com/vochicong/lc0-nvidia-docker to easily run lc0 and lichess-bot inside a Docker container.

Creating a homemade bot

As an alternative to creating an entire chess engine and implementing one of the communication protocols (UCI or XBoard), a bot can also be created by writing a single class with a single method. The search() method in this new class takes the current board and the game clock as arguments and should return a move based on whatever criteria the coder desires.

Steps to create a homemade bot:

1. Do all the steps in the How to Install
2. In the config.yml, change the engine protocol to homemade
3. Create a class in some file that extends MinimalEngine (in strategies.py).
   • Look at the strategies.py file to see some examples.
   • If you don't know what to implement, look at the EngineWrapper or UCIEngine class.
     • You don't have to create your own engine, even though it's an "EngineWrapper" class.
       The examples just implement search.
4. In the config.yml, change the name from engine_name to the name of your class

   • In this case, you could change it to:

     name: "RandomMove"

Tips & Tricks

• You can specify a different config file with the --config argument.
• Here's an example systemd service definition:

[Unit]
Description=lichess-bot
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Environment="PYTHONUNBUFFERED=1"
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 /home/thibault/lichess-bot/lichess-bot.py
WorkingDirectory=/home/thibault/lichess-bot/
User=thibault
Group=thibault
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

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 engine communication seamlessly.

License

lichess-bot is licensed under the AGPLv3 (or any later version at your option). Check out the LICENSE file for the full text.