Black captures:
White captures:
Timers
White ♔
10:00
Black ♚
10:00
Chess is a two-player strategy game played on an eight-by-eight board of alternating light and dark squares. Each side starts with sixteen pieces: eight pawns, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, a queen and a king. White moves first, and from then on players alternate turns. The object is not to capture every enemy piece but to trap the opposing king in a position where it is attacked and has no legal way to escape. That is checkmate, and it ends the game immediately.
On this page you play the white pieces against a computer opponent that replies automatically after each of your moves. Click a piece to select it, and the squares it can legally reach are highlighted. Click one of those squares to move. Illegal moves are simply refused, so you can experiment freely without worrying about breaking the rules.
Three special rules often surprise newcomers, and all three are implemented here. Castling lets you move the king two squares toward a rook and hop the rook over to the other side, provided neither piece has moved, the squares between them are empty, and the king is not passing through or landing on an attacked square. En passant allows a pawn to capture an enemy pawn that has just used its two-square advance to slip past it, but only on the very next move. Promotion triggers a small dialog so you can choose a queen, rook, bishop or knight.
The four central squares matter because pieces placed near them control more territory. A knight on the rim of the board reaches at most four squares; the same knight in the middle reaches eight. Opening with a central pawn and developing knights and bishops toward the middle is a reliable plan that needs no memorisation.
A common beginner mistake is charging out with the queen to hunt for a quick checkmate. Against any competent defence the queen gets chased around while the opponent develops with tempo. Bring out your minor pieces, castle your king to safety, connect your rooks, and only then look for targets.
A useful rough scale values a pawn at one point, knights and bishops at three, rooks at five and the queen at nine. Before trading, count how many attackers and defenders each side has on the square. If you attack a defended piece twice and it is defended once, the exchange favours you.
Most losses at club level come from overlooking a one-move threat. After every enemy move, scan for checks, captures and attacks on your undefended pieces before you think about your own plan. Undefended pieces are what tactics feed on: forks, pins and skewers almost always exploit something that was left hanging.
Both sides get a ten-minute clock that starts running as soon as the game begins, which is a good way to practise making decisions under mild time pressure. A running move list records the game in standard notation so you can look back at how a position came about, and captured pieces are shown above and below the board so you can see the material balance at a glance. The undo button takes back your last move along with the computer's reply, which makes the board useful as a study tool: play a line, see what happens, rewind, and try the alternative. The computer opponent searches a few moves ahead and evaluates positions using both material and square quality, so it will punish loose pieces but is beatable with steady, principled play.
If you are just starting out, our chess for beginners guide walks through the rules and the first few opening moves in more detail before you sit down at the board.