pgn-tactics-generator

About

This is a python application dedicated to creating chess puzzles/tactics from a pgn file. Also it can download your games from lichess.org and use that file.

It's based on the great https://github.com/clarkerubber/Python-Puzzle-Creator by @clarkerubber

Things that I changed:

Use a local pgn file with games as a source.
Write results to a file called tactics.pgn
Default engine depth to 8 so it's faster. Before it was nodes=3500000 this is a depth around 20. So it took several minutes to analyze a game. With depth 8 it takes seconds.
You can use a param to change the depth if you want more precision.
chess.pop_count to chess.popcount because it was failing

This is too complex, give something easy.

There is another option if you don't want to install and manage python scripts I created a more user friendly tactics generator and it's online http://chesstacticsgenerator.vitomd.com It uses a different approach to create tactics, so probably it will generate a different set of tactics.

Installation

This script requires the Requests and Python-Chess libraries to run, as well as a copy of Stockfish Is recommended that you use Python 3 and pip3. But it could work with Python 2.7 and pip (probably you will need to install futures pip install futures )

Install requirements

pip3 install -r requirements.txt --user

Setup

MacOS / Linux : sh build-stockfish.sh to obtain the current lichess Stockfish instance.

Launching Application

First you can download your games from lichess with

python3 download_games.py <lichess username>

This will download the last 60 games from blitz,rapid and classical. You can add some params like max number of games and the lichess api token that make the download faster. https://lichess.org/api#operation/apiGamesUser

python3 download_games.py <lichess username> --max 100 --token 123456789

Then execute the generator (it will look for a file called games.pgn) python3 main.py --quiet

You can also use parameters

--quiet to reduce the screen output.
--depth=8 param to select the stockfish depth analysis. Default is 8 and will take some seconds to analyze a game, with --depth=18 will take around 6 minutes.
--games=ruy_lopez.pgn to select a specific pgn file. Default is games.pgn
strict=False . False to generate more tactics but a little more ambiguous. Default is True
Threads and Hash defaults to 4 and 2048

Example: python3 main.py --quiet --depth=18 --games=ruy_lopez.pgn --strict=True <#Threads = 4> <Hash (MBytes) = 2048>

Tactics output

The resulting file will be a pgn file called tactics.pgn. Each tactic contains the headers from the source game. The result header it's the tactic result and not the game result. It can be loaded to a Lichess study or to an app like iChess to practice tactics.

Problems?

Stockfish errors

If you have problems building stockfish try downloading stockfish directly https://stockfishchess.org/download/

Want to see all my chess related projects?

Check My projects for a full detailed list.

nuelma991/pgn-tactics-generator