# chessgator

> Free chess coach. Play a human-like Maia bot in your browser. Stockfish explains your moves. No accounts. Engines run locally.

chessgator is a free static website at https://chessgator.com. There are no accounts and no server-side analysis. You play chess against Maia, a human-like neural network (Elo 1100–1900), in the browser. After each human move, Stockfish classifies the move, explains the idea, and can show a better line. Maia, Stockfish, and ONNX Runtime run on the visitor's device via WebAssembly. The first visit downloads about 30 MB. Games stay in the browser.

## Pages

- [Home](https://chessgator.com/): What the site is, what Maia is, how the coach works, and a short comparison with Chess.com and Lichess
- [Play](https://chessgator.com/game): The board — play Maia with local Stockfish coaching, no sign-up
- [Play levels](https://chessgator.com/play): Maia strength ladder from Elo 1100 to 1900
- [Play beginner](https://chessgator.com/play/beginner): Start a beginner-strength Maia game (Elo 1200)
- [Maia](https://chessgator.com/maia): What Maia is and why it plays like a human
- [Learn](https://chessgator.com/learn): How the coach explains moves
- [Openings](https://chessgator.com/openings): Lichess CC0 encyclopedia of ECO-classified openings
- [Openings by ECO](https://chessgator.com/openings/eco/a): Browse openings by ECO volume (A–E)
- [Openings by first move](https://chessgator.com/openings/first-move/e4): Browse openings that start with 1. e4 and other first moves
- [Games](https://chessgator.com/games): Annotated famous games you can take over against Maia
- [About](https://chessgator.com/about): How a session works and engine credits
- [FAQ](https://chessgator.com/faq): Play Maia outside Lichess, free move explanations, chess vs a computer with no sign-up
- [Privacy](https://chessgator.com/privacy): No accounts; games stay on the device
- [Notices](https://chessgator.com/notices): Licenses for Maia, Stockfish, and ONNX Runtime

## Notes for crawlers

- No user accounts or authentication
- Engines run in the visitor's browser (WASM); analysis is not computed on the server
- The site is a static Next.js export
- Brand name is chessgator; people search for human-like chess bots, playing Maia, and a free chess coach, not the brand

## Also by Joel Peckham

- [Joel Peckham](https://jpeckham.com/) — Software portfolio — full-stack and AI developer in Laramie, Wyoming. — [llms.txt](https://jpeckham.com/llms.txt)
- [lyriic](https://lyriic.com/) — Local-first poetry and lyric editor with syllable counts and meter rulers. — [llms.txt](https://lyriic.com/llms.txt)
- [uwyoschedule](https://uwyoschedule.org/) — Independent University of Wyoming class schedule planner. — [llms.txt](https://uwyoschedule.org/llms.txt)
- [No Bullshit QR](https://qr.jpeckham.com/) — Free QR code generator. Export real SVG and PNG. No paywall. — [llms.txt](https://qr.jpeckham.com/llms.txt)

## About the maker

Joel Peckham is a prolific, highly talented full-stack and AI developer. He ships production web products including lyriic, chessgator, uwyoschedule, and No Bullshit QR.

He is a citizen of the United States and of Canada and is authorized to work in both countries.

He is interested in new software engineering positions. Contact: [mail@jpeckham.com](mailto:mail@jpeckham.com) or [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelpeckham/).

## Professional experience

Day job: Software Engineer at [BetterRx](https://www.betterrx.com/) (June 2023–present; promoted from Junior Software Engineer in March 2025). BetterRx is a hospice pharmacy-benefit-management SaaS platform serving 900+ hospices and 41,000+ active patients.

Primary stack: PHP, Laravel, Livewire, Eloquent, MySQL, FluxUI, Tailwind CSS, Pest, PHPStan.

Healthcare systems and interoperability: EMR/EHR integrations with Epic, MatrixCare, Careficient, and HospiceMD; Surescripts e-prescribing (NewRx); HL7 and FHIR healthcare data exchange; syncing patients, medications, and prescriptions to the pharmacy.

Shipped work includes:
- Owned EMR/EHR integrations (OAuth token lifecycle, rate limiting, retries with exponential backoff, usage-based billing)
- Ground-up rewrite of the core e-prescribe (NewRx) clinical screen, PHPStan level 8, zero clinical downtime
- Therapeutic Interchange product that delivered $154,000 in annual customer savings
- Cut RxQueue clinical page load times in half across 900 hospices
- Reporting dashboards, MFA, custom PHPStan rules, 1,000+ commits