Lazy Chess
Christopher Cinq-Mars Jarvis · 2021 · Chess, Family Friendly, Turn-Based Tactics, Education, Relaxing
PC
Mixed60% · 10
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About Lazy Chess
Lazy Chess is a non-profit chess puzzle that aims to innovate the game and reduce the intimidation factor for new or self-conscious players. On average, there are more than 30 legal chess moves available to a player in a turn, creating vigintillions (that’s 10 followed by 63 zeros) of possibilities throughout a game. Lazy Chess compresses all those possibilities. Every turn, it offers you the best 2, 3 or 4 moves you could make. The only catch? You won’t know which move is the best!
The world's most sophisticated chess engine, Stockfish, analyzes the board and offers you the best two moves, but it won’t tell you which move is best until after you’ve confirmed your choice. The board plays as a real chess game would while limiting your selections. In any turn, your options may allow you to defend, progress, capture, or even use special rules such as castling. The moves provided in Lazy Chess can always win the match, but how strong are your decisions?
Lazy Chess is designed to take the stress out of chess. By simplifying the game, players of all levels will be able to play good chess with winning strategies. Those new to chess will learn creative moves and tactics, and those with experience can play with speed against a world-class neural network. Compete against an AI opponent, online with strangers or friends, or with the person next to you!
Looking for a greater challenge? Lazy Chess offers dozens of settings and variants, introducing random moves, varying Stockfish “depth” and a real-time advantage tracker. Challenge Mode allows you to use the openings of famous games and see if you can progress with the grandmasters. Those looking for further analysis of their games can copy the PGN of their game to their clipboard, or analyze it externally on external sites!
Lazy Chess was created by Cinq-Mars Media, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization developing educational games and technology, support of scientific research related to human safety and education, and to make such technology and research available on a charitable basis.
The world's most sophisticated chess engine, Stockfish, analyzes the board and offers you the best two moves, but it won’t tell you which move is best until after you’ve confirmed your choice. The board plays as a real chess game would while limiting your selections. In any turn, your options may allow you to defend, progress, capture, or even use special rules such as castling. The moves provided in Lazy Chess can always win the match, but how strong are your decisions?
Lazy Chess is designed to take the stress out of chess. By simplifying the game, players of all levels will be able to play good chess with winning strategies. Those new to chess will learn creative moves and tactics, and those with experience can play with speed against a world-class neural network. Compete against an AI opponent, online with strangers or friends, or with the person next to you!
Looking for a greater challenge? Lazy Chess offers dozens of settings and variants, introducing random moves, varying Stockfish “depth” and a real-time advantage tracker. Challenge Mode allows you to use the openings of famous games and see if you can progress with the grandmasters. Those looking for further analysis of their games can copy the PGN of their game to their clipboard, or analyze it externally on external sites!
Lazy Chess was created by Cinq-Mars Media, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization developing educational games and technology, support of scientific research related to human safety and education, and to make such technology and research available on a charitable basis.
What Steam players say
Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.
✦ AI summary
Players praise Lazy Chess as a clever concept that makes chess accessible to beginners by restricting choices to the engine's top moves, with a dynamic difficulty system that keeps games engaging. However, common complaints include the lack of explanations for why moves are recommended, a poor UI that feels like a phone port with confusing menus, and disagreement over whether the engine actually provides only the best options, with some players finding superior moves not offered by the system.
"...narrows your choices down to the best 2 possible moves per turn." I would argue against that. Within my first 5 minutes, I saw several moves available that were better than the two options provided. Opponent made several dumb moves as well, including passing over a good setup for checkmate. The UI and UX is terrible - and not because it's simple and minimal (that's actually the best part about it). It looks like some kind of phone-port with a responsive display that forces either a borderless-window or borderless-fullscreen. A third of the menu items are just redirecting you to their other, not-free, "non-profit" games. You open the game and it jumps right in without much explanation or mechanical interaction. Click the board to toggle between your two, given choices then click confirm button to select. That is the entire experience. Storepage presents the game as an opportunity to educate on advanced chess, but instead will leave you feeling like you just tossed a coin several dozen times and picked either heads-or-tails. Somehow managed to make something that sounds smart on paper feel really gross to interact with. They just threw a small, interactive experience over [url=…25 found this helpful
A neat idea but my core complain is that it doesn't explain *why* something was my best or 2nd best move. Adding in some explanations and information about each move as they happen would turn this from a curious toy into a really good and fun practice tool for new chess players.20 found this helpful
Lazy Chess adds a simple but interesting restriction to chess: what if you could only make the best moves available? It uses the Stockfish engine to suggest the top moves in each position, and you must choose one of them, while trying to figure out which one is the best, since that information is not available. So, with 2 possible moves, worst case scenario you’ll play a game where you always play the 2nd best move, which is still enough to win some games. But it’s not so simple, because the AI will adjust the difficulty according to your performance. You have an ELO rating, that I think takes into consideration your wins and your best move ratio. But you can adjust the difficulty manually and add more possible moves (to a max of 4) to add extra challenge. The game also has some extra modes, like suggesting the best move and a random one, and challenges, where you start from some famous positions. I think they’re novelties, but it’s nice to have extra content. There’s also multiplayer, but I couldn’t find anyone, and only managed to play against the AI during queues. However, this concept has a big issue. If you check it against your own Stockfish, you’ll realize that some of the b…11 found this helpful
Kind of gimmicky but I love the concept, and for it´s cheap price it´s easy to recommend4 found this helpful
This is probably the best game I've played for learning and improving my chess skills as its basicaly a sim chess type of game where it will only let you do 1 of 2 moves that are sugested each turn, and you will see every turn the best 2 moves you can play. I am a beginer so I don't know if anyone else gets stuck sometimes and makes a wrong move just because you cant see the best move. Well this game gives you the best 2 moves every time. It is quite basic though but thats ok i'm not complaining it's just I like analitics and stats. online and playing with friends is great coz you can play with someone that has never played before an they will be doing the best moves so it's a lot of fun. The creator of this chess game really brought somthing to the market that I think should be more widely used and inproved apon, maybe with a second game or dlc or update. THE 2 BEST MOVES IN EVERY GAME IS ESENTIAL TO UNDERSTAND AS IT CAN HELP YOUR STRATEGIC MIND DEVELOP BETTER TACTICS. I would like to see a newer game with strategic choices i.e. a choice of opening, I love the Sicilian Defence. I have dyslexia so reading about chess and grand masters openings and stratagies is hard for me. THANKS …2 found this helpful
Sounds like a gimmick, like some 'idle game' that'll be fun to click through once or twice just to see the pieces move. But it's surprisingly fun. Especially on settings other than the default. If you want to play chess without either having to study it for quite a while (even just memorizing the common openings and responses would take a while) or making a lot of rookie mistakes that, IMO, just feel frustrating... This game's a pretty good way to do so. You definitively CAN lose, especially on anything other than the initial, 'easiest', setting.2 found this helpful
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