Free Chess Online — Play vs Computer or 2 Players

Play chess online for free, right in your browser. Choose a game against the computer at one of five levels, from Beginner to Expert, or hand the phone to a friend and play two-player chess on one device. There is no signup and nothing to install. The board resizes to fit a laptop, a tablet or a phone, and you move the pieces by dragging them or by tapping a piece and then its square.

Play Chess Against the Computer

The computer is our own chess engine, built for this page. Pick the level that suits you with the level button under the board. It shows the current level (Medium to start) and opens the list of all five:

Beginner — just learning the moves. It makes plenty of mistakes and lets you practice checkmating.
Easy — a casual opponent that still blunders pieces now and then.
Medium — a fair challenge for a casual player who knows the basics. This is the default.
Hard — punishes loose moves and finds most tactics.
Expert — the engine at full strength: about a second and a half per move and no deliberate mistakes.

Play White, Black or a random side. If a move goes wrong, press Undo to take back your move and the computer’s reply. Every game is saved automatically, so if you close the tab you can carry on later from the same position. The game also keeps your record of wins, losses and draws at each level, so you can see when you are ready to move up.

2 Player Chess on One Device

Switch the mode to 2 Players in Settings, start a new game, and the computer steps aside. White and Black share the same screen for an easy pass-and-play game. Turn on Auto-flip and the board turns around after each move so the player to move always sees their pieces at the bottom, or leave it off and use the Flip button whenever you like. To look back over the game, open Settings and tap Move list.

How to Play Chess

Chess is played on an 8×8 board between White and Black. White moves first and the players take turns, one move each. The aim is to checkmate the opposing king: to attack it so that it cannot escape capture on the next move.

Setting up the board

Each side has eight pawns in front and, behind them, two rooks in the corners, two knights, two bishops, a queen and a king, with the queen on her own color. The game sets the board up for you.

How the pieces move

King — one square in any direction.
Queen — any number of squares along a rank, file or diagonal.
Rook — any number of squares along a rank or file.
Bishop — any number of squares along a diagonal, so it stays on one color all game.
Knight — an L shape: two squares in one direction, then one square sideways. It is the only piece that can jump over others.
Pawn — one square forward (two from its starting square) and it captures one square diagonally forward.

A piece captures by landing on an enemy piece’s square. With Show legal moves on, the game marks every square the selected piece can go to.

Check, checkmate and draws

When a king is attacked it is in check, and the player must get out of check at once by moving the king, blocking the attack or capturing the attacker. If none of those is possible, it is checkmate and the game is over. If a player has no legal move but is not in check, the game is a draw by stalemate. A game is also drawn by threefold repetition (the same position three times), by the fifty-move rule (fifty moves with no pawn move or capture) or by insufficient material, when neither side has enough pieces left to deliver mate.

Three special moves

Castling — once per game the king moves two squares toward a rook and the rook jumps to the square the king crossed. Neither piece may have moved before, the squares between them must be empty, and the king may not castle out of, through or into check.
En passant — if a pawn advances two squares and lands beside an enemy pawn, that pawn may capture it as if it had moved only one square. This is allowed only on the very next move.
Promotion — a pawn that reaches the far end of the board becomes a queen, rook, bishop or knight of your choice. The game asks you which piece you want.

Tips for Beating the Computer

Bring your knights and bishops out early and castle within the first ten moves to tuck your king away.
Before every move, check what your opponent’s last move attacks. Most lost games at the lower levels come from a piece left hanging.
Walk your king toward the center in the endgame and push your passed pawns; a new queen usually settles the game.
Lost a piece to a trick you did not see? Use Undo, find the better move, and you will spot the same pattern faster next time.