♞ Chess
🎲 Board · 0 playsChess
The game itself — against an opponent who can be set to your measure.
About Chess
No introduction is owed to chess, only an account of the sitting: a clean board, a computer opponent offered at three strengths, the freedom to switch sides, and an undo for the moments a finger outruns the mind. All the laws are kept — castling, en passant, promotion, the draws by repetition and stalemate — and legal moves are shown for a selected piece, which spares the beginner nothing of the thinking and all of the rule-checking. Chess remains what it has always been: the most complete exercise in foresight, patience and accepting the consequences of one's own decisions that any board has ever offered.
How to Play
Select a piece to see its legal moves, then select a destination square. Castling, en passant and promotion are all played by moving the pieces naturally. Choose Easy, Medium or Hard, switch sides whenever you like, and use undo without shame while learning.
💡 Tips & Strategy
Play the opening on principles, not memory: a pawn or two in the centre, knights before bishops, castle early, and connect the rooks. Avoid moving the same piece twice before development is done, and avoid bringing the queen out early where minor pieces will chase it with gain of time. These four habits, kept every game, reach playable middlegames against any level of the machine.
Adopt a blunder-check that runs before every single move: what did the last move attack, what of mine is undefended, and what does my intended move leave loose? At club level and below — and against the Easy and Medium machine — the overwhelming majority of games are decided by pieces left en prise, not by strategy. The habit of the ten-second check is worth two hundred rating points by itself.
In the middlegame, improve your worst piece and play toward targets: a backward pawn, an exposed king, a piece short of squares. Trade pieces when ahead in material, pawns when behind; keep the tension when your position is better and release it when worse. If you cannot name what a move accomplishes, it is probably not the move.
Use the machine deliberately: play seriously against a level you beat about half the time, and use undo not to escape consequences but to understand them — take back the losing move only after you have found what you should have seen. Switch sides in a lost position and try to convert the win; endgames — king and pawn especially — repay study faster than any opening file, and the machine is a tireless sparring partner for exactly that.