A free and open-source chess improvement app that combines the power of Lichess and Anki.

Encountered the following issue when downloading and installing for the first time:

❯ chessli --help
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/akshat/.pyenv/versions/3.8.6/bin/chessli", line 5, in <module>
    from chessli.cli.main import app
  File "/home/akshat/.pyenv/versions/3.8.6/lib/python3.8/site-packages/chessli/__init__.py", line 137, in <module>
    berserk_client = get_berserk_client(main_config.token)
  File "/home/akshat/.pyenv/versions/3.8.6/lib/python3.8/site-packages/omegaconf/dictconfig.py", line 353, in __getattr__
    self._format_and_raise(
  File "/home/akshat/.pyenv/versions/3.8.6/lib/python3.8/site-packages/omegaconf/base.py", line 190, in _format_and_raise
    format_and_raise(
  File "/home/akshat/.pyenv/versions/3.8.6/lib/python3.8/site-packages/omegaconf/_utils.py", line 821, in format_and_raise
    _raise(ex, cause)
  File "/home/akshat/.pyenv/versions/3.8.6/lib/python3.8/site-packages/omegaconf/_utils.py", line 719, in _raise
    raise ex.with_traceback(sys.exc_info()[2])  # set end OC_CAUSE=1 for full backtrace
  File "/home/akshat/.pyenv/versions/3.8.6/lib/python3.8/site-packages/omegaconf/dictconfig.py", line 351, in __getattr__
    return self._get_impl(key=key, default_value=_DEFAULT_MARKER_)
  File "/home/akshat/.pyenv/versions/3.8.6/lib/python3.8/site-packages/omegaconf/dictconfig.py", line 438, in _get_impl
    node = self._get_node(key=key, throw_on_missing_key=True)
  File "/home/akshat/.pyenv/versions/3.8.6/lib/python3.8/site-packages/omegaconf/dictconfig.py", line 470, in _get_node
    raise ConfigKeyError(f"Missing key {key}")
omegaconf.errors.ConfigAttributeError: Missing key token
    full_key: token
    object_type=dict

Environment: Ubuntu 18.0.4, System76 Laptop, Python 3.8

I imagine there's a config file I have to supply somewhere, but this doesn't seem to be reflected in the docs?

I have a large tactics database on pgn format that is separated in individual chapters for each puzzle. The way this tool sounds, this should be possible in the current setup, any advice on how to do this ?

First off: awesome project! I've been using an ad-hoc process to study chess with anki but I've never been totally happy with it. I think this utility has a lot of potential so thanks for putting it together!

My suggestion is to rework the architecture and move to a pipeline-style application with a controller and three distinct phases:

1. sources - build a pgn file with games
2. transformers - take a pgn file of games and build a pgn of "snippets" (pgn syntax but with a SetUp tag of 1, a FEN starting position and a few moves played out. I put an example at the bottom of this comment)
3. ankifier - take a pgn file of "snippets" and build anki cards

The lichess integration would be a "source"; integrations with chess.com, chessgames or chess24 could be other sources. Maybe interfacing with a Chessbase install could be another etc.

The mistakes/openings/tactics functionality would all be examples of various types of "transformers".

The ankifier would simply take these generated snippets and create anki cards.

Then the controller would be responsible for parsing the command line, handling all the state/config (eg api credentials and last downloaded game timestamp for a source), and gluing it all together so the user only has to type something like:

chessli lichess mistakes

to get their recent games from lichess downloaded/analyzed/ankified, instead of running each component in the pipeline on its own. Or maybe

chessli chessgames:tid=54397 openings

to get cards on the openings used in the Fischer/Spassky match ankified from https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?tid=54397

My reasoning for all this is that separating the full program into distinct pipeline phases with no shared state would allow easier contributions and extensions in the future. For instance, I could imagine writing up another transformer for memorizing games. It could take a pgn file and split it up into overlapping, 4-move snippets (moves 1-4 in the first pgn snippet, 3-6 on the next etc.) and with this architecture I could plug it right in and immediately be able to pull games from any of the included sources and make anki cards with zero additional effort. Likewise, if I want to add a source I don't have to build the entire pipeline, just getting a pgn with games is enough. I would also have the option to skip phases as needed, like if I already have a database of endgame positions as pgn "snippets" I can just plug it directly into the ankifier.

Anyways, this is just a thought, I don't know how far you want to take the utility or what use-cases you want to support, or if you even want to support it long-term lol. I just saw this and got excited for what it could be x). Feel free to delete/ignore this.

An example of a snippet might be: (Note, Lichess uses the [Variant] tag instead of the [SetUp] and [FEN] tags, maybe both styles should be supported)

[Event "F/S Return Match"] [Site "Belgrade, Serbia JUG"] [Date "1992.11.04"] [Round "29"] [White "Fischer, Robert J."] [Black "Spassky, Boris V."] [Result "1/2-1/2"] [Variant "From Position"] [FEN "rnbqkbnr/pp2pppp/3p4/2p5/4P3/5N2/PPPP1PPP/RNBQKB1R w KQkq - 0 3"]

3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3

Newish coder, how to setup chessli for tinkering purposes and also how to test tinkered features without breaking the pip install. Thanks for this awesome tool!

while also quizzing for the move sequence of an opening, will there be an addition to the flashcard and software to add a PGN to play it out visually?

Does anyone know why I get this error message when I try to enter the command: I'm using Python 3.9

py -m pip --version

I get the message File "", line 1

SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Thank you for any help!

I got the following error after running chessli games fetch:

  File "C:\Python39\Scripts\chessli-script.py", line 33, in <module>
    sys.exit(load_entry_point('chessli', 'console_scripts', 'chessli')())
  File "c:\python39\lib\site-packages\typer\main.py", line 214, in __call__
    return get_command(self)(*args, **kwargs)
  File "c:\python39\lib\site-packages\click\core.py", line 829, in __call__
    return self.main(*args, **kwargs)
  File "c:\python39\lib\site-packages\click\core.py", line 782, in main
    rv = self.invoke(ctx)
  File "c:\python39\lib\site-packages\click\core.py", line 1259, in invoke
    return _process_result(sub_ctx.command.invoke(sub_ctx))
  File "c:\python39\lib\site-packages\click\core.py", line 1259, in invoke
    return _process_result(sub_ctx.command.invoke(sub_ctx))
  File "c:\python39\lib\site-packages\click\core.py", line 1066, in invoke
    return ctx.invoke(self.callback, **ctx.params)
  File "c:\python39\lib\site-packages\click\core.py", line 610, in invoke
    return callback(*args, **kwargs)
  File "c:\python39\lib\site-packages\typer\main.py", line 497, in wrapper
    return callback(**use_params)  # type: ignore
  File "c:\users\joeys\chessli\chessli\cli\games.py", line 58, in fetch
    game_manager.fetch_games()
  File "c:\users\joeys\chessli\chessli\games.py", line 105, in fetch_games
    chessli_game.store()
  File "c:\users\joeys\chessli\chessli\games.py", line 167, in store
    (self.path / self.name).with_suffix(".pgn").write_text(str(self.pgn))
  File "c:\python39\lib\pathlib.py", line 1275, in write_text
    return f.write(data)
  File "c:\python39\lib\encodings\cp1252.py", line 19, in encode
    return codecs.charmap_encode(input,self.errors,encoding_table)[0]
UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character '\u2192' in position 695: character maps to <undefined>

'\u2192' is “→”, and I'm not sure exactly where in lichess this symbol would be found, but it occurred when trying to import this game: https://lichess.org/r0crIC7x/black

Ported from reddit for posteriority.

I seem to be running into an issue fetching the games: Input:

:~/chess/chessli$ chessli --user <name of the user> games ankify

Output:

requests.exceptions.HTTPError: 401 Client Error: Unauthorized for url: https://lichess.org/api/games/user/<name of the user>?since=1611013425256&max=20

I've played ~180 games in lichess. I ran "chessli games ankify --since forever" and only got mistakes from 2 games

I played 7 within the last week and the csv comes up completely empty.

I'm not at that level where I only have 2/180 games with mistakes :p I think there might be something up with it, unless i'm not understanding what constitutes a mistake

I ran "chessli tactics ls" and was able to print the table of puzzles

I also did some puzzles in lichess before running the command

However, running "chessli tactics ankify" always tells me I have no new puzzles. I've even tried running it for a handful of users and even with the --all flag.

When i do chessli games ankify

I cannot then run the above command for opening since the last-time stamp is updated and tells me I have no new games to fetch

tried installing on wsl with pip install chessli

got: Could not install packages due to an EnvironmentError: [Errno 28] No space left on device

so, i used export TMPDIR='/var/tmp' and the install completed. it's now in the site-packages file for python.

however, if try to run chessli or any variation on cli, it tells me: -bash: chessli: command not found

Hi guys I'm not very good with python and I couldn't install chessli, if anyone can make an explanatory video or send me a message on discord flex#3045 pls :(

First off,

Thank you so much for making this it is amazing. I have imported a csv with eco openings into cards.

All the cards have me start as white and play the first move, this is not ideal for the sicilian lines and such. Is there a simple way for me to have the card play the first move and I respond as black?

Thanks again for all the work you have done

-Jake

I'm new to chessli, running it on MacOS. When I run chessli tactics ankify I get:

🔥 CHESSLI TACTICS 🔥

[22:36:48] INFO Fetching new puzzle activity... tactics.py:28 [22:36:57] INFO There are 176 new puzzles! tactics.py:95 INFO Trying to read the most up-to-date lichess puzzle database from tactics.py:38 https://database.lichess.org/lichess_db_puzzle.csv.bz2. This may take a few seconds...
Traceback (most recent call last): File "/opt/homebrew/bin/chessli", line 8, in sys.exit(app()) File "/opt/homebrew/lib/python3.9/site-packages/typer/main.py", line 214, in call return get_command(self)(*args, **kwargs) File "/opt/homebrew/lib/python3.9/site-packages/click/core.py", line 829, in call return self.main(*args, **kwargs) File "/opt/homebrew/lib/python3.9/site-packages/click/core.py", line 782, in main rv = self.invoke(ctx) File "/opt/homebrew/lib/python3.9/site-packages/click/core.py", line 1259, in invoke return _process_result(sub_ctx.command.invoke(sub_ctx)) File "/opt/homebrew/lib/python3.9/site-packages/click/core.py", line 1259, in invoke return _process_result(sub_ctx.command.invoke(sub_ctx)) File "/opt/homebrew/lib/python3.9/site-packages/click/core.py", line 1066, in invoke return ctx.invoke(self.callback, **ctx.params) File "/opt/homebrew/lib/python3.9/site-packages/click/core.py", line 610, in invoke return callback(*args, **kwargs) File "/opt/homebrew/lib/python3.9/site-packages/typer/main.py", line 497, in wrapper return callback(**use_params) # type: ignore File "/opt/homebrew/lib/python3.9/site-packages/chessli/cli/tactics.py", line 70, in ankify tactics_manager.ankify_puzzles() File "/opt/homebrew/lib/python3.9/site-packages/chessli/tactics.py", line 158, in ankify_puzzles puzzles_df = self.read_lichess_puzzle_database() File "/opt/homebrew/lib/python3.9/site-packages/chessli/tactics.py", line 41, in read_lichess_puzzle_database puzzle_df = pd.read_csv(url, names=column_names, compression="bz2") File "/opt/homebrew/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pandas/util/_decorators.py", line 311, in wrapper return func(*args, **kwargs) File "/opt/homebrew/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pandas/io/parsers/readers.py", line 680, in read_csv return _read(filepath_or_buffer, kwds) File "/opt/homebrew/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pandas/io/parsers/readers.py", line 581, in _read return parser.read(nrows) File "/opt/homebrew/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pandas/io/parsers/readers.py", line 1254, in read index, columns, col_dict = self._engine.read(nrows) File "/opt/homebrew/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pandas/io/parsers/c_parser_wrapper.py", line 225, in read chunks = self._reader.read_low_memory(nrows) File "pandas/_libs/parsers.pyx", line 805, in pandas._libs.parsers.TextReader.read_low_memory File "pandas/_libs/parsers.pyx", line 861, in pandas._libs.parsers.TextReader._read_rows File "pandas/_libs/parsers.pyx", line 847, in pandas._libs.parsers.TextReader._tokenize_rows File "pandas/_libs/parsers.pyx", line 1960, in pandas._libs.parsers.raise_parser_error pandas.errors.ParserError: Error tokenizing data. C error: Expected 10 fields in line 3, saw 11

any help is much appreciated

I've been working on a way to practice tactics in Anki, and came across chessli. This looks to be way better than anything I could cook up!

I prefer to review my Anki cards in a web browser, rather than in the iOS app or the Anki desktop application. But I've noticed that opening the demonstration deck in Firefox from ankiweb.net results in running afoul of CORS policies. (At least, that's what I think it is.) Firefox displays this error:

"Firefox Can’t Open This Page

To protect your security, ankiuser.net will not allow Firefox to display the page if another site has embedded it. To see this page, you need to open it in a new window."

When I open the card in a new window, I can complete the tactic puzzle, but it doesn't allow me to show the answer.