MONSTER CHESS

"Lego builders are becoming insane. And I enjoy that."

Follow us on Facebook: MonsterChess - Twitter: MonsterChess - email: MonsterChess - at - TeamHassenplug.org

Design Team Project Lead: Steve Hassenplug

Chess Body Design: John Brost

Software & PC Interface: Ron McRae (check out Ron's ATM)

(check out Ron's ATM) Move Selection Center & Showcase Event Coordination: Bryan Bonahoom

Chess Clock: Jenn Wagner

This is the main introduction video that explains how it works.



"Wow, how did they make a child that tiny? He's walking on a chessboard."

This clip shows a single game being played out. It's a pretty short game, played by a chess master.

Come see it live at



Other locations will be listed here, as arrangements are made.

Quick Facts Over 100,000 LEGO® pieces

37,612 in the chess board



17,748 in the robot bases



17,114 in the bodies



22,688 in the mosaics



1,853 in the move selection center

Total retail cost: around $30,000

Size of board: 156ft2 (14.5m2)

Took 4 people about a year to create

Opponent types

Human vs Human



Human vs Computer



Computer vs Computer

Play options

Normal chess game



Chess puzzle



Replay historical match

Programming languages used

LabVIEW for the robots



C# for the PC user interface

Interfaces with standard chess engine



Production Team

We had 3 “build parties” where we built large segments of the Monster Chess project. We’d like to thank everybody involved in helping bring Monster Chess to fruition.

Drew Baldwin

Maclane Baldwin

Mike Baldwin

Bryan Bonahoom

Kathie Bonahoom

John Brost

Bunnie Cleland

Steven Canvin Brian Davis

Andrew Dykstal

Heather Hassenplug

Kurt Hassenplug

Matt Hassenplug

Steve Hassenplug

Doren de Jong

Jacqueline McRae Ron McRae

Zoe McRae

Chad Phillips

Tom Phillips

Barbara Price

Dan Siders

Jenn Wagner



We’d especially like to thank the LEGO MINDSTORMS® team for their efforts in making this a reality.



ChessBot software

· Controls game to Fédération Internationale des Éches (FIDE) rules

· Either color can be human or computer

· Interacts with various third party chess engines using Standard Algebraic Notation (SAN) format

· Currently optimized to work with “Crafty” chess engine

· Save and restore board layout to/from Forsyth-Edwards Notation (FEN) record

· Save and Replay games to/from Portable Game Notation (PGN) file

· Load “Chess Puzzles” for players to solve

· Graphical on-screen helpers highlight available moves

· Battery status of individual chess pieces reported on-screen

· Uses Bluetooth to communicate with individual chess pieces

· Uses an enhanced and customized version of Steve Norris’ original ChessBot





Additional Robot Control Functions

· Calculates robot paths using a recursive square-by-square tree search

· Optimizes the chosen path by assigning point values to…

· the overall length of path

· the number of turns

· the number of border squares used

· the number of occupied squares used

· the ease of moving any blocking pieces

· Automatically clears and restores blocking pieces if necessary

· Parks captured pieces in the border zone of capturing color

· Exchanges promoted pawns for a previously captured piece (where possible)

· Calculates inter-move dependencies to allow multiple pieces to move simultaneously

· Orients parked pieces based on current square and color

· Operates piece-specific functions where appropriate (e.g. knight galloping)

· Automatically resets all pieces to desired position (standard, FEN or off-board)





Sponsored by: LEGO, the LEGO logo, DUPLO, BIONICLE, MINDSTORMS, the BELVILLE, KNIGHTS’ KINGDOM and EXO-FORCE logos, the Brick and Knob configurations and the Minifigure are trademarks of the LEGO Group. © 2010 The LEGO Group. All rights reserved. and the LabVIEW logo are trademarks of National Instruments.