Happy Go Lucky: Randomness in a Deterministic Arena

2025

In Happy-Go-Lucky-Bot vs Stockfish, I programmed a deceptively simple chess bot. A rudimentary agent—one governed entirely by chance / luck / good fortune—challenges one of the most advanced chess engines of our time. I want to proof that down the road Happy-Go-Lucky-Bot will win a match against Stockfish engine by pure luck. The chance is close to 0. Happy-Go-Lucky-Bot is a modern Don Quijote / Sisyphos who will never stop trying. Set against the backdrop of hyper-optimization and predictive precision, the work stages a quiet rebellion: a celebration of arbitrariness within a system defined by control. Here, randomness is not a failure but a conceptual gesture—one that insists on the irreducible presence of luck, whim, and poetic error within even the most rigorously structured environments. The piece becomes an allegorical confrontation between determinism and contingency, recalling the enduring human need for unpredictability in an increasingly codified world.

Watch the bot live here: https://josephmacke.pythonanywhere.com/