Play chess. Find the checkmate.
Free chess in your browser: play the computer at 10 levels, challenge a friend, solve daily puzzles, analyze with Stockfish and learn with 37 free lessons. No account needed.
Scholar's Mate: 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nc6 3.Qh5 Nf6?? 4.Qxf7#. Learn the patterns
Play vs computer
Ten levels, from beginner to grandmaster strength.
Play a friend
Send a link and play live, peer to peer.
Pass & play
Two players, one device, with chess clocks.
Puzzles
Daily puzzle, rated tactics and your puzzle rating.
Puzzle Rush
Three minutes, three strikes. How many can you solve?
Analysis board
Paste a PGN or FEN and see Stockfish's best line.
Learn chess
Openings, tactics, checkmates, endgames and strategy.
Merch
Chess Checkmate tees and hoodies.
Learn chess, one idea at a time
Most players stop improving for the same reason: they play a lot of fast games and never study the ideas that decide them. Our lessons fix that with one clear idea per page. Every lesson is built around real positions, shown on diagrams you can open on the analysis board and test against Stockfish.
If you are new, learn how the pieces move and how to read chess notation, then spend most of your time on tactics: forks, pins and skewers and discovered attacks win more games below master level than anything else. Learn the basic checkmates early, so that a winning position actually turns into a win, and add a few opening principles instead of memorising long lines.
Then put it to work. Solve the daily puzzle, play one longer game against the computer at a level where you win about half the time, and check your losses on the analysis board. Our guide to how to study chess turns that into a weekly plan.