Chess Blitz

Setup

Standard chess on an 8×8 board, White moving first. Both clocks run on our servers rather than on either phone, so a disconnection cannot be used to gain time and neither player can argue with the count.

The host picks the time control in the lobby: one, three or five minutes on each player's clock.

How to play

The pawn moves one square forward, or two from its starting square, and captures diagonally. The knight moves in an L — two squares one way and one the other — and is the only piece that jumps. The bishop moves any distance diagonally, the rook any distance in a straight line, the queen either, and the king one square in any direction.

Castling: if neither your king nor the rook has moved, the squares between them are empty, and your king is not in check and does not pass through or land on an attacked square, the king moves two squares toward the rook and the rook hops over it.

En passant: a pawn that has just advanced two squares can be captured by an enemy pawn beside it, as though it had only moved one — but only on the very next move.

Promotion: a pawn reaching the far rank becomes a queen, rook, bishop or knight of its own colour.

Controls

Tap a piece to pick it up, then tap the square you want it on. The legal destinations for the piece in your hand are marked, so an illegal move is not something you can send by accident.

Tap the same piece again to put it down. Nothing is committed until you tap a destination, so you can pick pieces up and look at where they could go for as long as your clock allows.

A pawn reaching the far rank opens a promotion chooser — queen, rook, bishop or knight. The move is not sent until you choose, so promotion is never decided for you.

Both clocks sit in the seat rails above and below the board. Yours runs only while it is your move, and it stops when your move reaches the server rather than when the animation finishes.

Resign and Offer draw sit in the board's action row. Resign asks you to confirm because it cannot be undone; a draw offer from your opponent appears in the same place as an Accept and a Decline.

The board is never mirrored. Files run a to h from White's left in both languages, and when you play Black the board is turned round so that your own pieces are nearest you, as they would be across a real table — so the two of you always read the same coordinates for the same square.

Scoring

Chess has no points inside the game. The result is the whole of it — a win, a loss or a draw.

On your profile a win pays 30 points, a draw 10 and a loss 5. That is the largest award of any game here, priced for the length and weight of a match rather than for how hard it is to win.

Chess moves your rating, which starts at 1000 and is zero-sum: whatever you take from your opponent is exactly what they lose. Beating a player rated far above you moves it a long way; beating one far below barely moves it at all.

The tiers are bronze below 1100, silver from 1100, gold from 1300, platinum from 1500 and diamond from 1700.

Rating moves only in an online game between exactly two people. Practice against the bot and games on one phone pay nothing and change nothing — the clock still runs, but the result goes nowhere.

Winning

Checkmate — the king is attacked and there is no legal move that stops it — wins the game. If your clock reaches zero you lose, unless your opponent has too little material to deliver mate, in which case it is a draw.

Draws happen by stalemate (no legal move but the king is not in check), by insufficient material, by the fifty-move rule, by threefold repetition, or by agreement. Either player may offer a draw on their own turn; the other may accept or decline. If the player who offered moves before the answer comes, the offer lapses.

Resigning ends the game immediately and awards it to your opponent.

Tips

Develop knights and bishops before moving the same piece twice, and castle early — a king in the centre of an open board is the most common way a good position collapses.

Every move, ask what your opponent's last move threatens before you ask what yours does.

On a fast clock, a good move now beats a better move ten seconds from now.