ChessQAbout
ChessQ turns any chess picture (real-life chessboard photos and 2D chess diagrams) into a digitized, editable chess position.
You can then analyze directly on Lichess, or copy/paste the FEN notation.
Created by Joël Seytre, it builds on the ChessQueries paper and research project.
ChessQ Lite also powers image import in the Lichess Board Editor.
Frequently asked questions
Models
Do you support 2D chess diagrams or real-life chessboard photos?
Yes, ChessQ supports both. You can upload a diagram or a photograph of a physical board.
What is the difference between ChessQueries and ChessQ?
ChessQ builds on ChessQueries with additional proprietary training data and further model tweaks and improvements. The original ChessQueries models were trained only on public data: ChessCog, ChessReD, and SLCC. ChessQ achieves more robust performance across diverse chess board setups and 2D chess diagrams.
Lichess integration
Why is the output sometimes different from the Lichess website?
Lichess uses the smaller ChessQ Lite model. This website defaults to the larger ChessQ model. You can choose a model in Advanced settings, including ChessQ Lite and the original paper models.
Is it normal that ChessQ inference runs faster than the Lichess board editor integration?
Lichess runs the model on your own hardware. It downloads the model on first use, and recognition can take several seconds depending on your device. ChessQ runs recognition on a server GPU.
Future work
Will the board automatically match the photograph’s perspective?
Yes, automatic orientation is planned. For now, results initially appear from White’s perspective. Use Flip board to view the position from Black’s side.
Are scanned scoresheets to FEN or video to PGN planned?
Not currently. If you are interested in building such a product together, please reach out to contact@chessq.org.
Licensing
Can I use ChessQ in the way Lichess does? Do I need a license?
The published ChessQueries code and model weights, including ChessQ Lite, are shared under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0. Non-commercial research projects and non-profits like Lichess are welcome to use the models with proper credits. For commercial use, please reach out to contact@chessq.org.