by Kevin de Roulet

Chess is awesome. Versions of chess have been played for over a thousand years, and today millions of people around the world play it for recreation or competition. Chess is ever-evolving, mentally stimulating, and thoroughly enjoyable.

For many, chess is also a nostalgic game--I personally have fond memories of losing to my parents and to the computer (R.I.P Chessmaster 3000) as a kid, and so I've nostalgically themed this chess app, built in React.

Deployed app is playable here

Github Repo is viewable here

And the Trello can be enjoyed here

• React.js
• Node.js
• Express.js
• Mongo.db (Mongoose)
• JSON web tokens
• Socket.io

• Chess.js
• Chessboard.js

Why is this important? Look at virtually every website with chess on it out there--just about each one of them uses chess.js and chessboard.js. I wanted to blaze my own trail on this one.

As I implemented Socket.io, I realized that a better route to take would have been writing game logic and move-handling server side. Were I to start again with this project, I likely would have built out the sockets first, later implementing the game logic so that the sockets are not forced to fit around the already existing game logic.

With an app like this, the potential is endless. I would love to add a timer feature to matched games, ensuring that players don't take too long in order to have wins. I would also like to persist player win-loss-draw records, as this could give the matched games a little extra weight.