2 Player Chess - Play Chess for Free

The original two player game

Chess has been the two player game for about fifteen hundred years, and it still needs exactly what it always needed: two people and a board. The board part we handle. Sign up free, and your opponent can be someone you know or one of the thousands of players here - matched to your strength, ready to start within minutes.

Nothing to download, nothing to buy, no board to set up and no pieces for the dog to eat. The game runs in any web browser, and there is a free app for iPhone and Android when you would rather play from the sofa.

Pick the pace: minutes or days

Two player chess here comes in two speeds. Live chess is the familiar kind - both players at the board at once, clock running, game done in minutes. Daily chess is the slower art: a day or more per move, the game unfolding over a week or a month, with real thinking behind every decision. Most players end up loving the slow form precisely because nothing else in modern life works that way.

Either way the games are real, rated if you want them to be, and against a genuine human opponent - this page of the internet remains gloriously computer-free, though a practice game against the engine is there when you want a sparring partner who never gloats.

Finding your second player

If you have someone in mind, challenge them directly by username. If not, open invites list players looking for a game right now, filtered by rating and pace, and tournaments will pair you automatically for as long as you keep entering them. The community has been here since 2001 - finding an opponent has never been the hard part.

Frequently Asked Questions