peer2peergames

Chess

The whole game, including the parts people forget: castling through check, en passant, and the several different ways a game ends in a draw.

Play Chess Leaderboard

The rules

  1. The king moves one square in any direction. The queen moves any distance in a straight line or a diagonal.
  2. A rook moves any distance along a rank or file, a bishop any distance diagonally, and a knight in an L: two squares one way and one square across, jumping anything in between.
  3. A pawn moves one square forward, or two from its starting square, and captures one square diagonally forward.
  4. Castling moves the king two squares towards a rook and the rook to the far side of it. Neither piece may have moved, the squares between must be empty, and the king may not start, cross or finish on an attacked square.
  5. En passant: a pawn that advances two squares past an enemy pawn may be captured by it, as if it had only moved one, and only on the very next move.
  6. A pawn reaching the far rank is promoted, almost always to a queen.
  7. Checkmate wins: the king is attacked and there is no move that ends the attack.
  8. A draw is a stalemate (no legal move but not in check), the same position three times, fifty moves with no capture and no pawn move, insufficient material to mate, or agreement.

Every move is validated by the server, so an illegal move is not possible here, and neither is missing that you are in check.

Playing it here

  • Against a person or the bot. The bot needs no account and starts at once. To play a person, be rated and keep your games, you need an account: an email address and a password.
  • At your own pace. Every move has a deadline you both see, from five minutes to a week. A game can take an evening or it can take a fortnight.
  • Nothing to buy and nothing to win. No stakes, no prizes, no boosts, no undo. The only thing on offer is a place on a leaderboard, and only if you want one.
  • Every game can be checked. Anything decided by chance comes from the game's seed, and the seed is published the moment the game ends, so any finished game can be replayed and verified by anyone. See fair play.