Chess, at your pace.

The board has 64 squares. White moves first; players alternate one move at a time. Files are a–h and ranks are 1–8. Your goal is checkmate: attack the enemy king so it has no legal escape. Kings are never captured. A highlighted destination is a legal move, not necessarily a strong move.

Pawns move forward and capture diagonally. Rooks move straight; bishops diagonally; queens do both. Knights jump in an L; kings move one safe square. Pieces other than knights cannot jump over others. You cannot make a move that leaves your own king attacked.

Castling moves the king two squares toward a rook, which moves across it. The king and rook must not have moved, the path must be empty, and the king must not be in, cross or end in check. A pawn reaching the final rank promotes to a queen, rook, bishop or knight. En passant is available only immediately after the opponent's two-square pawn move beside your pawn.

Stalemate is a draw when the player to move has no legal move and is not in check. This game also ends automatically on threefold repetition, insufficient material or the fifty-move rule. There are no clocks or online opponents in this version.

Control the center, develop knights and bishops, and castle when safe. Before moving, look for checks, captures and threats for both sides. Keep your pieces protected. Start with First steps, then increase difficulty as you improve. Computer move delay defaults to 2 seconds and can be changed while playing without restarting. Engine calculation may add a little more time. Pausing cancels the pending move; resuming starts the selected delay again. This is a response delay, not a chess clock. These local computer levels are not Elo-rated; Advanced is a small browser engine, not a professional chess engine. Hints suggest a legal move and can miss tactics.