International Chess
Goal: trap the enemy king so it is under attack and has no legal escape. That is checkmate, and it ends the game immediately.
Click one of your pieces. Its legal moves appear as green dots (empty squares), red rings (captures) and gold squares (castling). Click a marker to move there, or click the piece again to deselect. White moves first.
One square in any direction. Losing it ends the game, so it is never actually captured — it is trapped.
Any distance in all eight directions. The strongest piece on the board.
Any distance in straight lines. Also the piece that swaps places with the king when you castle.
Any distance diagonally — so each bishop stays on one colour of square all game.
An “L”: two squares one way, one square across. The only piece that jumps over others.
Steps forward one square (two on its first move), but captures only diagonally — the red rings.
These are the rules that catch new players out. All three are fully supported here — the board will only ever offer them when they are legal.
Once per game: the king slides two squares toward a rook and that rook hops to the far side. Both must be unmoved, the squares between empty, and the king may not start in, pass through, or land in check.
If a pawn tries to slip past an enemy pawn by moving two squares, that enemy pawn may capture it as if it had only moved one — but only on the very next move.
A pawn reaching the far end becomes a queen, rook, bishop or knight — your choice. Most players take the queen; a knight is occasionally stronger.
When your king is attacked you are in check and must get out of it — move the king, block the attack, or capture the attacker. If you cannot, it is checkmate and you lose. If you are not in check but have no legal move at all, it is stalemate — a draw, not a win.
A game is also drawn by threefold repetition (the same position occurs three times), the fifty-move rule (fifty moves each with no capture and no pawn move), or insufficient material — when neither side has enough left to force mate, such as a lone king and bishop. All of these are detected automatically.
Tick “Computer plays Black” and pick a difficulty. Easy looks two moves ahead and will let you get away with things; Medium looks four; Hard looks five and takes a second or two to reply. Untick the box to play another person on the same screen.
Host a room and share the 4-digit PIN, or tap the ET room that anyone can jump into. The front two in the queue play; everyone else watches the live board. Winner stays on, the loser goes to the back of the line, colours swap each game, and the host taps Start next match ▶ between games.