Chess ClockTiming tool·Free to use
Chess
Checkmate the opposing king in a full game of chess against the computer or a friend.
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ChessHow to play Chess
Choose your opponent, level and colour
Play the computer at Casual, Club or Strong, or share the board with another person. Pick White or Black; the board turns to face you and the computer opens when you take Black. Select a piece to see its legal destinations, marked with dots for empty squares and rings for captures.
Protect your king
Moves that leave your king in check are forbidden. Castling, en passant and promotion are supported. Choose a queen, rook, bishop or knight when promoting.
Finish the game
Checkmate wins. Stalemate, insufficient material, threefold repetition and the fifty-move rule end this browser edition in a draw. Undo takes back a complete pair of turns against the computer.
Chess controls
- Tap / click / Enter
- Select a piece, card or answer
- New game
- Start another round
- Level selector
- Casual, Club or Strong computer
- Play as
- White or Black
- Undo
- Take back a move, and the computer reply
This Chess game is built for Free Games. Read about controls and local storage.
Choose a related challenge
Chess has no dice: every legal move is available to inspect. In Backgammon, a roll changes which moves you can make.
What Chess is like to play
Chess is the full game: 32 pieces, 64 squares, and one goal, which is to trap the enemy king so that it is attacked and has no legal escape. That is checkmate, and it ends the game immediately.
Everything supported here is the real rule set. Castling on both sides, en passant capture, and pawn promotion to a queen, rook, bishop or knight when a pawn reaches the far rank. Any move that would leave your own king in check is refused outright, so you cannot blunder into an illegal position. Select a piece and the board marks its legal destinations.
Draws are handled properly too. Stalemate, insufficient material, threefold repetition and the fifty-move rule all end the game as a draw, and the status line names which one. Undo takes back a full pair of turns.
Be clear about the opponent: it is a casual computer player that looks a short way ahead and mostly counts material, not a rated engine. It will punish a hanging piece and miss deeper ideas. Choose 2 players to share the device instead, and use the chess clock if you want timed games on a real board. Other two-player boards sit in the board game strategy guide.
Chess at a glance
| Genre | Board Strategy Games |
|---|---|
| Challenge | A lifetime of study, playable in an hour |
| Pace | Twenty minutes to an unhurried afternoon |
| Original era | About 600 CE in India, modern rules from 1475 |
| Players | Two players on one device, or against the computer |
| Controls | Tap / click / Enter, New game, Level selector, Play as, Undo |
| Cost | Free, with no account and no download |
Where Chess came from
Chess descends from chaturanga, played in northern India by about the sixth century CE. Its four divisions of the army, infantry, cavalry, elephants and chariots, became the pawn, knight, bishop and rook. The game moved to Persia as shatranj, where "shah mat", the king is helpless, gave English the word checkmate.
Arab traders and conquest carried shatranj across North Africa into Spain and Sicily by the tenth century. The medieval European game was slow: the queen moved one square diagonally and the bishop jumped two.
The modern game was born in Spain and Italy around 1475, when the queen and bishop gained their long-range powers. Contemporaries called it "scacchi alla rabiosa", mad queen chess, because games suddenly ended fast. Those are essentially the rules we still play.
Formal competition followed much later. Howard Staunton organised the first international tournament in London in 1851, and Wilhelm Steinitz became the first recognised world champion in 1886. Computers caught up in 1997, when IBM's Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov over six games. If you want a board where luck has a seat at the table, backgammon is the counterweight.
Ways people play Chess
- Chess960
- Also called Fischer Random. The back rank pieces are shuffled into one of 960 legal starting arrangements, mirrored for both players. Opening memorisation is worthless and you have to think from move one.
- Blitz and bullet
- The same rules under a short clock, typically 3 or 5 minutes each for blitz and one minute for bullet. Accuracy drops, practical tricks matter more, and running out of time loses.
- King of the Hill
- You win by checkmate as usual, or by walking your king to one of the four central squares. The king becomes an attacking piece, which inverts almost every normal safety rule.
- Atomic and other capture rules
- In Atomic, a capture destroys every piece on the surrounding squares. In Antichess, capturing is compulsory and losing all your pieces wins. Both keep the board and change the goal.
Chess questions and answers
How strong is the computer opponent?
It is casual, not a serious engine. It searches only a short distance ahead and judges positions mainly by the material on the board, so it grabs free pieces and avoids obvious losses but misses long plans. Treat it as a practice partner rather than a test.
Does it support castling and en passant?
Yes, both, plus promotion. Castle by moving the king two squares toward the rook when neither has moved, the squares between are empty, and the king is not passing through check. En passant appears automatically when a pawn's two-square advance passes your capturing pawn.
What happens when my pawn reaches the end?
You choose the piece it becomes: queen, rook, bishop or knight. The board asks you rather than assuming a queen, because underpromotion to a knight occasionally delivers a check that a queen cannot.
How does the game end in a draw?
Four ways here. Stalemate, when the player to move has no legal move and is not in check. Insufficient material, when neither side can possibly mate. Threefold repetition of the same position. And the fifty-move rule, meaning fifty moves by each side with no capture and no pawn move.
Can I take a move back?
Yes. Undo reverses a full pair of turns against the computer, so both your move and its reply disappear and it is your turn again in the earlier position. Use it to test an idea rather than to grind out a win.
Can two people play on one screen?
Yes. Set the opponent selector to 2 players and pass the device. Nothing is installed and no account is required, though for a game across a real board you may prefer the timer page.
Why will the board not let me make a move?
Almost always because the move would leave your own king in check, which is illegal. Select your king to see whether it is currently attacked. The board only offers legal destinations, so anything not highlighted breaks a rule somewhere.
If you like Chess, try these next
Four games from the same shelf, each with its own pace. The one-line summaries are how their own pages describe them.
| Game | What it is like | Pace | Play |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chess Clock | Time a game on your own chessboard with two configurable countdown clocks. | Whatever you set, from 1 to 180 minutes | Play |
| Reversi | Outflank opposing discs and finish with the most discs on an eight-by-eight board. | Around ten minutes a game | Play |
| Backgammon | Move all fifteen checkers into your home board and bear them off before your opponent. | Ten to twenty minutes for one game | Play |
Board game strategy: think one turn ahead.
Gravity, forced captures, extra turns and legal replies change what “think ahead” means on each board.
