RobMulla / chessviz

W209 Final Project: Chess Viz

chessviz

This repo holds all files related to chessviz, and interactive visualization of chess game data created as a final project for W209: Data Visualization, a course in UC-Berkeley's Masters of Information in Data Science (MIDS) program.

Contents

1. Target Use Case
2. Repo Structure
3. Data Sources
4. How to Create an App Instance
5. References

Target Use Case

Check out our mid-term presentation

Repo Structure

This repo is structured as follows:

• app/ = all files necessary to run the app (JS, CSS, HTML, and data)
• app/<language> = JS, CSS, and HTML code written by the project authors
• app/<language>/lib/ = JS, CSS, and HTML code from external sources
• setup/ = all files needed to seed a new directory for running the app. The scripts in this directory handle installing dependencies and pulling data. The directory assumes a Unix-alike operating system, so Windows users should use it with Ubuntu on Windows 10 or in a VM
• sandbox/ = workspace for experimentation. Not needed to run the applicaiton.

Data Source

Raw data used in this project come from the FICS Games Database. That database holds chess match records for all games since 2016 involving at least one Grand Master.

Format

The data is stored in the Portable Game Notation (PGN), with an example of a single game as follows:

[Event "FICS rated standard game"]
[Site "FICS freechess.org"]
[FICSGamesDBGameNo "410004192"]
[White "BradVanHoozer"]
[Black "figasecond"]
[WhiteElo "2022"]
[BlackElo "2050"]
[WhiteRD "0.0"]
[BlackRD "0.0"]
[TimeControl "600+10"]
[Date "2016.12.31"]
[Time "23:31:00"]
[WhiteClock "0:10:00.000"]
[BlackClock "0:10:00.000"]
[ECO "D37"]
[PlyCount "27"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]

1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. e3 e6 4. c4 Be7 5. Nc3 O-O 6. Bd3 c5 7. O-O Nc6 8. dxc5 Bxc5 9. a3 a6 10. b4 Be7 11. Bb2 dxc4 12. Bxc4 b5 13. Be2 Bb7 14. Qb3 {Game drawn by mutual agreement} 1/2-1/2

Data Prep

In order to calculate some of the data for specific tasks, the data needs to processed into individual lines for aggregation. The convert_raw_data.py script takes the PGN file and goes over them, extracting for each move, the following data:

• Game number
• White username
• White ELO
• Black ELO
• Black username
• Turn number
• Result (white win, black win or draw)
• Piece
  • Player (white or black)
  • Piece type
  • Starting piece position
• Move to location
• Taken piece
  • Player (white or black)
  • Piece type
  • Starting piece position

Final Data Formats

We used the python-chess package to read in the PGN file for initial processing.

References

Chess Stuff

1. chess-dataviz D3 library and examples
2. FICS Games Database
3. Grandmaster wikipedia
4. python-chess library
5. Portable Game Notation Wikipedia

Boostrap

1. Getting Started with Bootstrap
2. How to Include Bootstrap in a Project
3. W3Schools tutorial