Play chess online with a friend
Chess
The royal game for two under FIDE rules: castling, en passant, promotion – the table spots draws by itself. With a chess clock if you like.
How to play Chess
Free in your browser, no sign-up, no download: open a lobby, share the invite link, play.👥 2 players
🎯 Goal: Checkmate your opponent's king: it is in check and no move gets it out.
♞ Moving: White starts, then you take turns. Tap one of your pieces – dots show free squares, rings captures – and then its target. With the keyboard the arrow keys walk the board and Enter selects.
♜ Special moves: Castling: the king moves two squares towards the rook, and the rook jumps over it. En passant: a pawn takes a pawn that has just double-stepped past it. Promotion: when a pawn reaches the last rank, you choose a queen, rook, bishop or knight.
🏆 Winner: Whoever checkmates the opposing king wins. With a clock, whoever runs out of time loses. You can resign at any time.
🤝 Draw: The table spots draws by itself: stalemate, insufficient material, the third repetition of a position and 50 moves without a capture or a pawn move. You can also agree on a draw.
Settings & scoring
⏱️ Chess clock: If the host sets one: a base time for the whole game plus seconds for each of your moves (Fischer). If your time runs out, you lose – unless your opponent could no longer mate at all; then it is a draw.
⚙ Settings: The host can set a chess clock: none, 5 + 3, 10 + 5 or 15 + 10 – minutes for the whole game plus seconds after each of your moves. With “Host plays White” the host fixes the colours of the first game, otherwise they are drawn by lot.
🖱 Controls: The last move is tinted gold, a king in check has a red background. Next to the board stand the move list in your language's notation, the captured pieces and the material lead; ⇅ flips the board. “Offer a draw” proposes one, “Resign” ends the game after asking once more.
💡 Good to know: Shortly before an automatic draw the footer warns you: when the position stands for the second time, and in the last ten moves of the 50-move rule. Below 20 seconds the time turns red and ticks. In games with a clock you can set a premove: while your opponent thinks, tap your piece and the target – the move is played as soon as it is your turn, if it is legal then (a pawn on the last rank becomes a queen). The clock does not charge you up to 0.3 seconds of transfer time per move.
🔁 After the game either of you can offer a rematch – it starts as soon as the other accepts. The colours swap, and whoever did not open the last game moves first.