Chess Notation Quiz

About

Chess notation visualization quiz pulling live grandmaster games from chessgames.com, built with WPF + stealth Selenium scraper bypassing 2025 anti-bot detection for imagination training.

History

Started playing chess seriously with a colleague and dove into grandmaster books, but struggled visualizing long notation sequences without a board. Wanted to train my spatial imagination to read faster and absorb strategies quicker, so built this game pulling real grandmaster matches from a public chess database instead of random positions.

SubTasks

• UI Flow Using WPF
• Access and Parse HTML
• Bypass JS Check and 403
• ChessDotNet Library for PGN/FEN Notation

Challenges

Stealth Webpage Scraper

Needed random chess game positions from chessgames.com for a personal game feature, but the site used JS auto-redirects plus 2025 anti-bot detection that blocked all automation with 403s and "JavaScript disabled" screens.

Approach

• Started with HttpClient using browser headers, but hit synchronous deadlocks plus no JS execution for the redirect. Tried PuppeteerSharp next but got instant 403 bot detection despite stealth flags.
• Switched to standard Selenium ChromeDriver which technically loaded pages but failed navigator.webdriver checks. Added comprehensive stealth with --disable-blink-features=AutomationControlled, excluded automation args, and JS injection to hide the webdriver flag.
• Used ChromeDriverService.HideCommandPromptWindow = true plus Windows API (ShowWindow(FindWindow("chromedriver"), 0)) to eliminate visible console windows, and added Process.Kill() cleanup for zombie Chrome processes.
• Instead of arbitrary fixed waits, used WebDriverWait checking URL changes and document.readyState == "complete" for proper callback-driven timing.

Lessons & Future Improvements

• Current solution launches fresh Chrome each time (5-6s startup). Next step would be a persistent Chrome profile with --user-data-dir or singleton ChromeDriverService reuse to cut startup to under 2s.
• Process killing works but is heavy-handed; could implement PID tracking from ChromeDriver or use a remote WebDriver server for cleaner lifecycle management without manual cleanup.

Concise Rules

1. Decide how many moves you want to test your brain power.
2. Make the chess board state the same after making those moves.
3. Once you have the solution, hit Submit.
4. If you'd like to keep practicing with the same game, you can just change the turn count and hit "Same Game".

Play Demo Video

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