Chess

How to play Chess

1. Tap one of your pieces and every square it can legally reach lights up — a dot for a quiet move, a ring for a capture. Tap a lit square and the piece goes. White moves first, and who plays white swaps every round.
2. Each piece has its walk: pawns push forward (two squares on their first step) and capture diagonally, knights hop in an L over anything, bishops run diagonals, rooks run ranks and files, the queen does both, and the king steps one square at a time.
3. The special moves are all here. Castle by tapping your king two squares toward a rook. A pawn that reaches the far side promotes — a card pops up and you pick queen, rook, bishop, or knight. And yes, en passant is offered automatically, so the argument is settled before it starts.
4. When your king is attacked, that's check — the board flags it in red and you must deal with it. Trap the enemy king with no way out and it's checkmate: the round is yours.
5. No pieces left to force mate, a stalemated king, a position repeated three times, or fifty quiet moves — all called as draws automatically. Shake hands and go again.

A little background

Chess has been the kitchen-table game for fifteen hundred years: born as chaturanga in India, carried through Persia as shatranj (checkmate comes from shāh māt — "the king is helpless"), and into Europe, where around 1475 the queen was promoted from a one-square shuffler into the strongest piece on the board — scandalized players called it "mad queen chess". The pieces here are drawn after the Staunton pattern, the 1849 design every tournament set has copied since.

This version is deliberately for two humans — no engine, no ratings, no clock. Play it the way it was learned at home: one phone flat on the table like a fold-out board, or a live duel across two devices when someone claims the title from the next room. Every rule is enforced by the board itself — castling rights, en passant, promotions, the lot — so beginners can learn by tapping a piece and seeing where it lights up. Free, no ads, no account — everything but the duel works offline.