Explore chess
Things to try, whether or not your school books anything
All free, no sign-up, and nothing is stored about anyone who uses them. Everything here runs in your own browser.
- Good for any age
Help the knight reach the star
Twenty seconds. No chess knowledge needed, and the shortest route is worked out for you at the end.
Open - Real positions, checked
Find the move
Forty four positions that happened in real games between real players, from the open Lichess database, each one replayed move by move before it went in. Three difficulty bands, described in words rather than as a rating.
Open - Runs in your browser, nothing installed
Play a full game
The complete board with take back, put back, board flip, coordinates, sound, PGN in and out, and a keyboard you can play the whole game with.
Open - Three minutes
How the pieces move
Every piece, its rule in one line, and the squares it reaches from wherever you drop it. Includes the pawn capture rule, which is the one everybody gets wrong first.
Open - As long as you like
Design your own chess piece
Colour a king, a knight or a pawn, part by part, then put it on a board and see how it looks. One true thing about each piece, including where its name came from.
Open - Four minutes
What your brain is doing during a move
Eight regions labelled with the job each is generally associated with, mapped onto a single move. Plus a straight answer about what that does and does not prove.
Open - Two minutes
What happens before a move
The same idea without the anatomy. Eight things a player does between looking at the board and touching a piece.
Open - Five minutes
Chess through time
Where the game came from, and the single rule change that turned a slow game into the one we play now.
Open - Two minutes
What kind of chess explorer are you?
Six questions, for fun. No email, nothing stored, and it measures nothing at all.
Open