I'm a chess player living in Odense, Denmark — the home of Hans Christian Andersen. I play in our local club's small rapid tournaments. Anyone who's played rapid knows the feeling: the clock is ticking, the position is sharp, your hand goes from the piece to the clock to the score sheet — and somewhere in there, the notation gets skipped. By the next round it's already gone.
Almost every game, I came home wishing I could replay it. Find the missed tactic. Show a friend that one combination that worked. But the moves were lost. That kept bothering me, and eventually I thought: my phone has a camera. Why can't it just watch?
That was the seed of VisionChess. A phone, a board, and AI that records every move automatically — so you can play the way chess is meant to be played, on a real board, and still review the game afterwards on chess.com or lichess.
Teaching kids — and a small surprise
I also teach chess to children. To make lessons more fun, I started printing quirky 3D chess sets — Pokemon pieces, dragon-themed sets — and the kids loved them. A boring practice game became an adventure when the rook was a Pikachu.
That gave me another idea. What if the pieces could talk? Pikachu making its little "pika pika" chant when it moves. A dragon roaring on a capture. The app calling out "illegal move!" when a kid tries something funny. It turned out to be one of the features kids enjoy the most — and adults too, secretly.
The H.C. Andersen Set
Living where I do, I couldn't resist designing my own set: an H.C. Andersen-inspired chess board with characters from the fairy tales. It's the set I'm most proud of, and one of the boards VisionChess recognizes out of the box.
I hope you find the idea as much fun as I do. If you're a chess player, a parent teaching the game to a child, or just someone curious about what AI can do on a real chess board — VisionChess was made for you.
— Kadir Erdem Demir, Odense