Chess — Rules
Goal
Attack the opponent's king so that it cannot escape (checkmate).
Pieces
- King: one square in any direction.
- Queen: any number of squares straight or diagonally.
- Rook: any number of squares straight.
- Bishop: any number of squares diagonally.
- Knight: moves in an "L" shape and can jump over pieces.
- Pawn: one square forward (two on its first move), captures diagonally.
Special moves
- Castling: allowed if the king and rook have not moved, the squares between are empty and the king does not pass through attacked squares.
- En passant: a pawn that advances two squares can be captured by an adjacent enemy pawn on the very next move.
- Promotion: a pawn reaching the last rank becomes a queen, rook, bishop or knight.
End of the game
- Checkmate: the side that mates wins.
- A player who resigns loses.
- Draw: stalemate, insufficient material, fifty-move rule, threefold repetition (automatic).
Portal notes
- Click a piece to see its legal squares. Illegal moves are not possible.
- If you choose "Random" colour, it is decided by a fair draw. White moves first.
- There is no time limit.
Playing on the portal
- Computer players never cheat; they cannot see your cards or any hidden information.
- Chance elements such as shuffling and dice use a secure random number generator and give no one an advantage.
- Scored / Test: a scored game counts for the leaderboard of that game and level. Test games are not recorded anywhere; they have no move timer and undo can be enabled.
- Points: at every level a win is +1, a draw 0, a loss −1. In 3–4 player games the sole winner gets +1, the last place −1, the others 0; a shared first place gets 0, a shared last place −1. Partners get the same points. The number of hands or target does not change this.
- Move time: in a scored game you must move within the time you chose (chess 20–300 s, other games 30–300 s). A countdown is shown with a warning in the last 10 seconds. End-of-hand windows do not count.
- Leaving the table: in a scored game the Exit button, starting a new game of the same kind, closing your account, losing the connection for more than 3 minutes, running out of move time and long inactivity all count as leaving:
- Leaving in the first hand or in a one-hand game is a loss (−1).
- Later, if you are in sole first place on the completed hands, no points are recorded; otherwise it is a loss.
- In partnership games: if your team is ahead you get no points and your partner +1; if level, you −1 and your partner 0; if behind, both −1.
- In chess the material is compared (pawn 1, knight 3, bishop 3, rook 5, queen 9): behind in material is a loss; level or ahead scores 0.
- Resigning in chess counts as a loss.