Leela Chess Zero

Leela Chess Zero [1,2] is a project that learns to play chess from scratch using a combination of neural networks and reinforcement learning. Except for the fundamental rules of chess, no human knowledge or data is used. Everything "she" learns is learned through self play. Leela Chess Zero is a forked [3], open source implementation of the AlphaZero [4] project by Google's DeepMind [5] for chess and designed to run on consumer grade hardware. 

This is a distributed effort, meaning many users around the world donate their CPU/GPU computations in the form of self-play games. These games are then collected to train the next generation neural network, iteratively improving the chess engine. The goal is to become the most powerful chess engine in the world with a radical new interesting play style.

Training these neural networks requires powerful, dedicated hardware to run 24/7. Therefore we initiated this gofundme. The money collected here will go straight into vital hardware upgrades like the graphical processing unit, memory and fast random access harddrives.


1. http://lczero.org
2. https://github.com/glinscott/leela-chess
3. https://github.com/gcp/leela-zero
4. https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.01815
5. https://deepmind.com/


P.S. You can already play her here: http://play.lczero.org/ She will automatically upgrade her "brain" as new networks are trained.

*Edit 28/04/2018*

Gofundme kindly requests a withdrawal plan from us to access the funds. I personally live in the Netherlands, the servers and server room are hosted by a volunteer in Finland. This is how we plan on doing it:

1. We're constructing a list of hardware to buy (in progress)
2. The server admin from Finland will order the hardware from the list, send a copy of the receipts to me and pictures for us to post in updates here.
3. I will extract the required money consistent with the receipts and transfer the amount to his bank account.