How to turn your Raspberry Pi into the ultimate chess trainer

The Picochess chess program already has a long and storied history behind it—something you should be aware of if you’re looking to download and use it to play chess with on Raspberry Pi.

After years of development, version 1.0 was released in 2019, but only offered minor improvements compared to 0.9N. This was followed by version 2.01 at the beginning of 2020 and 3.0 towards the end of the year. Version 3.3 has been available since May 2024.

You can download these newer versions at github.com/tosca07/picochess. However, this is only Picochess. To be able to use the tool, you must first set up the Raspberry Pi OS operating system. The prototype of the upcoming version 4 of Picochess has also been available without Raspberry Pi OS since May 2025.

Anyone looking for ready-made images with Raspberry Pi OS and Picochess on the web will almost inevitably end up on github.com/jromang/picochess. However, the last change there was more than six years ago—so it’s not recommended.

Not much is happening elsewhere either: for example, the “DGT Pi Chess Computer” with integrated Raspberry Pi comes with the ancient Picochess version 0.9L. On the DGT website there is only a reference to a YouTube video explaining how to update to a more recent version. A poor service.

However, if you have to do it yourself, there are better ways. Instead of paying around $400 for the DGT Pi Chess Computer, you can use a Raspberry Pi and a DGT-3000 chess clock for around $100.

Or you can build your own chess computer by giving the Raspberry a touchscreen. It’s also possible to play with the Raspberry on a tablet as Picochess has an integrated web server.

Enter the IP address that your router has assigned to the Raspberry. If a touchscreen is connected directly to the desktop version, the address is 127.0.0.1.

Picochess 3.3 Desktop and Lite

As of September 2025, there are two 3.4 versions of Picochess—a desktop and a lite version. The desktop version is, as far as Picochess is concerned, the same, but unlike the Lite version, it has a desktop environment and some extra software.

The Lite version is ideal for older Raspberry Pis, such as the 3 series models. Both images can be downloaded from the Picochess Google group, each on the current Bookworm version of Raspberry Pi OS.

The image of the Lite version is 5.7GB in size (unpacked 10.5GB), that of the desktop version 7.1GB (unpacked 16 GB). You should use at least a 32GB micro SD card for the desktop version, as otherwise no further updates are possible.

You should also create a larger swap file on a Raspberry with less main memory.

Writing the image to the SD card

There are several ways to write the image to the micro SD card. First install the Raspberry Pi Imager (under Ubuntu) with

sudo apt install rpi-imager

Then open Raspberry Pi Imager. Select the Raspberry model and the entry Use custom as the operating system at the bottom. Then select the previously downloaded and unzipped image file, followed by your SD card and Next.

In the next step, edit the settings. On the “Services” tab, switch off Enable SSH. Under “General”, uncheck Hostname and Set username and password.

Then set up the Wi-Fi (“Configure Wifi” with SSID, password and Wi-Fi country) and specify the language settings. Save the settings and then select Yes in the next dialogue window and the one after that. Under Ubuntu, you must then enter the root password to start the write process.

You can then start the Raspberry Pi with this image. After booting, the partitions are enlarged to cover the entire SD card. If you have set up WLAN, you will have to wait a little longer due to a compatibility problem. The system will shut down again and you’ll need to unplug the power cord briefly to restart.

The Raspberry Pi restarts several times. Finally, the desktop image appears (or a prompt in the Lite version). The user name is “pi” and the password is “picochess”.

Changes in the “picochess.ini”

At the prompt—in the desktop version in a terminal—change to the “/opt/picochess” directory. There, edit the file with

nano picochess.ini

The content is very well explained and you only have to change a few things. Set the standard playing time below the “Time selection” line. Change the line “board-type = dgt” to

board-type = noeboard

if you want to play against the engine via the web server. There are also many other options. For example, you can send yourself games by e-mail or have Picochess automatically check for updates. Just have a look at the “picochess.ini” file.

Other engines

The image contains box64 and Wine to be able to use x86 Linux and Windows chess engines. This requires a 4k pagesize kernel on a Raspberry Pi 5. If you don’t have a Pi 5, you can remove the entry “kernel=kernel8.img” with

sudo nano /boot/firmware/config.txt

(“#kernel=kernel8.img”) and then reboot the computer with

sudo reboot

There are two folders under “/opt/picochess/engines/ aarch64”: “linux64” and “windows64”. One folder is for x86_64-bit Linux systems, the other for Windows chess engines, which do not run as reliably.

The freely available versions of Komodo Dragon, Komodo 14.1, and Stockfish run on both Windows and Linux. You must first download the Komodo engines from the homepage and add them to the appropriate folder.

Set the files to executable and adjust the required entries in the “favorites.ini” in the aarch64 folder. There are ini examples in the corresponding directories.