Tournaments

How the points work

• A win is 2 points, a draw 1, a loss 0.
• Two wins in a row and you're on fire 🔥. Then every game counts double, 4 for a win and 2 for a draw, until you don't win.
• A draw in fewer than 10 moves each scores nothing. A quick agreed draw shouldn't pay.
• Equal points: whoever has played fewer games goes ahead, then whoever got there first.

How you're paired

• When a game ends, you get a new opponent after a few seconds: the free player closest to your score.
• You only get the same opponent twice in a row when nobody else has been free for a while.
• Colors even out: if you had White last time, you'll usually get Black next.
• If you don't make your first move within 30 seconds, you lose the game and are paused, so nobody sits waiting for you.
• When time is up, no new games start, but the ones under way are played out, and they count.

House players

When a tournament is short of players, some of our opponents sit down at the boards, so there's always someone to play. If you're on your own, three of them come, and as more people arrive they step back. They're on the list by name, marked house player, and they take places, badges and cups like everyone else. The ones who sit down are close to your own strength: beat one, and the next is a little stronger; lose, and the next is a little weaker. After each game against you the opponent changes, so you meet someone new. They're always players from Beginner to Hard, never the very strongest, and they never play in class tournaments or club tournaments.

Games against them count toward your Live rating, and they have ratings of their own, on the same list as everyone else. Two exceptions, so nobody can collect points with a trick: if you win the same way as last time, with the same first twenty moves, the game doesn't count, and against the same house player at most five games a day count.

Your games are shown on Watch while they're played and kept in the archive afterward, with your name. If you'd rather they weren't, turn off Show my games on your profile.

Play fair

Think for yourself. Help from a chess program during a game is cheating, and it spoils things for everyone else. There's no chat, only ready-made greetings, and if an opponent's name is mean, you can replace it with one tap.

Would you rather play someone you know? Invite a friend, or take it slow with correspondence chess.