Playgridia
Chess
Classic chess with a real chess clock, on four boards. Play free against bots or real opponents.
8×8
Rules
- Win by checkmating the enemy king: it is attacked and has no legal way out.
- Pawns move forward and capture diagonally; the first move may be two squares.
- The knight jumps in an L and passes over anything in between.
- Bishops move diagonally, rooks in straight lines, the queen does both, without limit.
- Castling: the king steps two squares sideways and the rook hops to its far side — if neither has moved and the king is not in check.
- En passant: a pawn that has just moved two squares may be captured as if it had moved one, but only immediately.
- A pawn reaching the last rank promotes to a queen, rook, bishop or knight.
- Draws: stalemate, threefold repetition, the fifty-move rule, insufficient material, or agreement.
- Running out of time loses — unless your opponent has no material to mate with, which is a draw.
How to play
- White moves first. Tap a piece to light up its legal squares, then tap the one you want.
- You can drag and drop instead — both do exactly the same thing.
- A square you can capture on is ringed; an empty legal square gets a dot.
- A king in check is marked in red, and no move that leaves it there will be accepted.
The chess clock
- Your time is for the WHOLE game, not per move: spending four minutes on move 12 is a real decision.
- "3+2" means three minutes each, plus two seconds back after every move.
- You see your opponent’s clock too — time pressure is part of the game.
- Running out loses; if your opponent cannot possibly mate, it is a draw instead.
The boards
- Classic: real wood and Staunton pieces. Always free.
- Emberhold: elves against dwarves — a capture is a clash.
- Eaglecrown: a crown army against an empire — a capture is a volley.
- Duskhollow: a pale coven against an abyssal brood — a capture is a devouring.
- All four play the SAME chess. A theme changes the art, the cast, the sound and the score — never a rule.
Draws and resigning
- You can offer a draw; the offer stands until your opponent answers or you make a move.
- The game draws itself on a third repetition, or after fifty moves with no pawn move and no capture.
- Resigning is a real decision: you are conceding the game.
- Against a bot you can take back your last move with ↩; the position comes back but the time you spent does not. There is no takeback against a human.
Play Chess Online — Free, No Account Needed
Chess has been played on the same eight ranks for fifteen hundred years and nobody has finished it yet. This is the full rule set: castling, en passant, promotion, stalemate, threefold repetition, the fifty-move rule and insufficient material — all in the engine, all verified.
You can start without signing up. Open a table and send a friend the link, or sit down against a bot at one of three strengths. The board lives on the server, so closing your tab does not lose your game.
A real chess clock: bullet, blitz and rapid
Your time is for the whole game rather than per move — that is what a chess clock is for. 1+0 and 2+1 bullet, 3+2 and 5+0 blitz, 10+0 and 15+10 rapid, 30+0 classical: you pick the tempo when you open the table.
A Fischer increment comes back onto your clock after every move, so a long game does not simply evaporate. Running out of time loses — unless the other side has nothing left to mate with, in which case the game is drawn, exactly as the rulebook says.
Four boards, one chess
The classic board comes with wood and Staunton pieces and is always free. The three themed boards — Emberhold, Eaglecrown and Duskhollow — each bring their own cast, their own sound design and their own cinematic at the moment a piece is taken.
What matters is that all four play the same chess. A themed board changes the art, the characters, the sound and the music; it does not change a rule, a move or an advantage. In chess the board IS the rules, so what is on sale is only ever how it looks.
Guides & articles
All Games
Playgridia Blog