Online chess is

chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

that is played over the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

, allowing players to play against each other. This was first done asynchronously through PLATO and email in the 1970s. In 1992, the

Internet Chess Server The American Internet Chess Server, commonly known as Internet Chess Server (ICS) was a telnet-based chess server which allowed users to play live chess over the internet. History In the 1970s, one could play correspondence chess in a PLAT ...

facilitated live online play via telnet, and inspired several other telnet-based systems around the world. Web-based platforms became popular in the 2010s and grew considerably amid the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside a trend of livestreaming chess.

History

Asynchronous

Online chess has existed in various forms including

PLATO Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...

and play-by-email since the dawn of the

in the 1970s.

Chess servers

Internet chess servers were the first way to play live chess against a human opponent via the internet. In 1992, Michael Moore and Richard Nash developed the American Internet Chess Server (ICS), which allowed users to connect via

telnet Telnet (sometimes stylized TELNET) is a client-server application protocol that provides access to virtual terminals of remote systems on local area networks or the Internet. It is a protocol for bidirectional 8-bit communications. Its main ...

. Graphical interfaces were developed to improve upon the text-only experience. In 1994, developer Daniel Sleator, who improved the server's code to address several bugs, copyrighted it and commercialized the server as the

Internet Chess Club The Internet Chess Club (ICC) is a commercial Internet chess server devoted to the play and discussion of chess and chess variants. ICC had over 30,000 subscribing members in 2005. It was the first Internet chess server and was the largest p ...

. Frustrated former users and developers began improving the older code to launch the Free Internet Chess Server. While they have waned in popularity, both servers are still active as of 2024.

Websites

The first chess website which allowed playing through a graphical interface, was Caissa.com (known at the time as Caissa's Web) which launched in 1995. Since then, a number of chess websites have been developed. These include Chess.com,

Lichess Lichess (; ) is a free and open-source software, free and open-source Internet chess server run by a Nonprofit organization, non-profit organization of the same name. Users of the site can play online chess anonymously and optionally register an ...

, and chess24, which were the largest chess websites as of 2021, though chess24 has since been acquired by Chess.com and was shut down on January 31, 2024, in favor of Chess.com.

Growth

Online chess saw a spike in growth during the

quarantine A quarantine is a restriction on the movement of people, animals, and goods which is intended to prevent the spread of disease or pests. It is often used in connection to disease and illness, preventing the movement of those who may have bee ...

s of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

. This was due to both isolation and the popularity of

Netflix Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple lang ...

miniseries '' The Queen's Gambit'', which was released in October 2020. Chess app downloads on the

App Store An app store, also called an app marketplace or app catalog, is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not i ...

and

Google Play Store Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store, Play Store, or sometimes the Android Store (and was formerly Android Market), is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certifie ...

rose by 63% after the show debuted. Chess.com saw more than twice as many account registrations in November as it had in previous months, and the number of games played monthly on Lichess doubled as well. There was also a demographic shift in players, with female registration on Chess.com shifting from 22% of new players to 27% of new players. Grandmaster

Maurice Ashley Maurice Ashley (born March 6, 1966) is a Jamaican and American chess player, author, and commentator. In 1999, he earned the FIDE title of Grandmaster (chess), Grandmaster (GM). Ashley is well known as a commentator for high-profile chess even ...

said "A boom is taking place in chess like we have never seen maybe since the

Bobby Fischer Robert James Fischer (March 9, 1943January 17, 2008) was an American Grandmaster (chess), chess grandmaster and the eleventh World Chess Championship, World Chess Champion. A chess prodigy, he won his first of a record eight US Chess Champi ...

days," attributing the growth to an increased desire to do something constructive during the pandemic. USCF Women's Program Director Jennifer Shahade stated that chess works well on the Internet, since pieces do not need to be reset and

matchmaking Matchmaking is the process of pairing two or more people together, usually for the purpose of marriage, in which case the intermediary or matchmaker is also known as a marriage broker. Matchmaking may be done as a profession for a fee or it may ...

is virtually instant. In 2023, Youtube revealed that the game of online chess had amassed over 4 billion views during the calendar year.

Streaming

Online chess

livestreaming Livestreaming, live-streaming, or live streaming is the streaming of video or audio in real time or near real time. While often referred to simply as ''streaming'', the real-time nature of livestreaming differentiates it from other non- liv ...

also saw a surge amidst the pandemic. Players like

Hikaru Nakamura Christopher Hikaru NakamuraDaniel Naroditsky, and Levy Rozman along with many others streamed chess via Twitch, with more than 41 million hours of chess being watched total on the platform from March to August 2020. Chess.com teamed up with high-level chess streamers to organize PogChamps, an amateur tournament contested between popular Internet personalities that was streamed on Twitch and at one point became the top-viewed stream on the platform.

Operation

Rating system

Chess websites pair players based on a chess rating system; after a game ends, ratings are updated immediately and players may search for a new game using their updated ratings. The

uses the

Elo rating system The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess or esports. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American chess master and physics professor. The Elo system wa ...

, while Chess.com uses the

Glicko rating system The Glicko rating system and Glicko-2 rating system are methods of assessing a player's strength in zero-sum two-player games. The Glicko rating system was invented by Mark Glickman in 1995 as an improvement on the Elo rating system and initiall ...

and

the Glicko-2 rating system, which are modern and more complex versions of Elo.

Speed

Over-the-board This glossary of chess explains commonly used terms in chess, in alphabetical order. Some of these terms have their own pages, like ''#fork, fork'' and ''#pin, pin''. For a list of unorthodox chess pieces, see Fairy chess piece; for a list of ter ...

(OTB) chess is traditionally played with a slow

time control A time control is a mechanism in the tournament play of almost all two-player board games so that each round of the match can finish in a timely way and the tournament can proceed. For turn-based games such as chess, shogi or go, time cont ...

, meaning players are allowed more time to consider moves. Online chess is often played faster, with 93.8% of live chess games on Chess.com being played with a time control of 10 minutes per side or faster.

International Master FIDE titles are awarded by the international chess governing body FIDE (''Fédération Internationale des Échecs'') for outstanding performance. The highest such title is Grandmaster (GM). Titles generally require a combination of Elo rating and ...

Anna Rudolf said that "online chess' shift to speed chess has brought excitement to the game."

Premove

A premove is an instruction given by a player to a chess program to make a certain move on a following turn if possible. Premoving is a feature exclusive to online chess. It is offered by many chess websites, including the

, the Free Internet Chess Server, Chess.com, and

. Chess.com allows players to make multiple premoves at once. The Internet Chess Club allows one to block players who use premoves. There is some amount of strategy involved when premoving. Generally, premoves should only be used when the chosen move would be a good move in any subsequent position where it would be valid, such as if it is a response to a potential capture by one's opponent. Premoves may also be useful in extreme

time trouble In chess played with a time control, time trouble, time pressure, or its German translation ''Zeitnot'', is the situation where a player has little time to complete the required moves. When forced to play quickly, the probability of making blunder ...

to avoid running out of time.

Cheating

Online cheating is an issue that has had a large effect on all levels of play. This is usually achieved by using a

chess engine In computer chess, a chess engine is a computer program that analyzes chess or List of chess variants, chess variant positions, and generates a move or list of moves that it regards as strongest. A chess software engine, engine is usually a Front ...

to get the best moves in a given position, though it can take other forms including sandbagging and

rating A rating is an evaluation or assessment of something, in terms of a metric (e.g. quality, quantity, a combination of both,...). Rating or rating system may also refer to: Business and economics * Credit rating, estimating the credit worthiness ...

manipulation. Chess.com stated in August 2020 that they were closing roughly 500 accounts each day due to cheating, some of whom were Grandmasters and titled players. High-level chess tournaments were largely forced online during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the

FIDE The International Chess Federation or World Chess Federation, commonly referred to by its French acronym FIDE ( , ), is an international organization based in Switzerland that connects the various national chess federations and acts as the Spor ...

Online Nations Cup and the

Magnus Carlsen Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen (born 30 November 1990) is a Norwegian Grandmaster (chess), chess grandmaster. Carlsen is a five-time World Chess Championship, World Chess Champion, five-time World Rapid Chess Championship, World Rapid Chess Champio ...

Chess Tour. These were played on websites like Chess.com and chess24, but enforced additional rules on

webcam A webcam is a video camera which is designed to record or stream to a computer or computer network. They are primarily used in Videotelephony, video telephony, live streaming and social media, and Closed-circuit television, security. Webcams can b ...

usage and screen sharing in order to prevent cheating. Some tournaments also disallowed leaving the computer for breaks or to walk around, which would usually be allowed in an in-person tournament.

References

{{Chess Chess Online games