Chess guide

A guide to Chess on OverTime: lobby settings, controls, Pass & Play, opening habits, avoiding blunders, the move timer and how ratings work.

How to play Chess

  • 2 players
  • 8x8 board

Goal

Checkmate your opponent - attack their king so that no legal move escapes the attack.

  • Selected piece (corner brackets)
  • The last move (a solid ring)
  • A queued premove (a dashed ring)
  • A legal move (a dot, or a ring round a capture)
  • A king in check (a red glow)
What the marks on a square mean

How the pieces move

  • Pawns advance one square, two from their starting square, and capture diagonally.
  • Rooks move any distance in straight lines; bishops any distance diagonally; the queen does both.
  • Knights jump in an L - two squares one way and one the other - and are the only piece that can leap over others.
  • The king moves one square in any direction and may never move into check.

The special moves

  • Castling moves the king two squares towards a rook and the rook to its other side, provided neither has moved, the squares between are empty, and the king is not moving through or into check.
  • A pawn reaching the far rank promotes, almost always to a queen.
  • En passant lets a pawn capture an enemy pawn that has just passed it with a two-square advance.

How a game ends

  • Checkmate wins. Stalemate - no legal move while not in check - is a draw.
  • Either player may offer a draw, and the opponent may accept or decline.
  • Games are rated, and a turn timer applies, so running out of time matters.

Before your first game

Chess on OverTime is a game for two. The game page offers Find a game, a list of public lobbies, Create a lobby and a box to join with a code.

Pass & Play seats two people at one device. The colours swap after every game, and a panel keeps each seat's score across the session.

In a lobby you can pick White or Black, and the host sets the time per move. The choices are one, three, five or ten minutes, or No Limit, and five minutes is the default.

That limit resets with every move. It is not a clock for the whole game, so even the shortest setting leaves room to think.

To move, click a piece and then its destination, or drag it. On the keyboard, the arrow keys move around the board. Enter or Space picks a piece up and sets it down, and Home and End jump to the ends of a row.

On a phone the page stacks into one column, and the board grows to fill the width. A theme picker offers six board colour schemes, with Warm Wood as the default.

A sound way to start

The opening has three jobs. Claim the centre with a pawn or two, bring out your knights and bishops, and castle to tuck your king away.

Move each piece once before you move any piece twice. Every repeated move in the opening is a tempo your opponent spends on development.

Keep the queen at home for the first few moves. Brought out early, she can be chased by minor pieces, and each chase gives your opponent a free developing move.

Connect your rooks once the minor pieces are out. With the back rank clear, they defend each other and are ready for any file that opens.

Reading the game as it unfolds

Start every turn by asking what your opponent's last move threatens. The last move is ringed on the board, and the move list records the whole game in standard notation.

Then look at every capture and every check, for both sides. Most short games are decided by a piece left loose or a check nobody saw coming.

Captured pieces sit beside each player's name, ordered by value, so the material balance is always in view. Trade pieces when you are ahead, and avoid trades when you are behind.

Premoves help in quick exchanges. While your opponent thinks, you can queue one move of your own. If it is no longer legal when your turn comes, it is dropped and you move as normal.

Mistakes that cost games

A handful of habits lose more games than any opening choice.

  • Leaving a piece undefended. Before you move, count attackers and defenders on every square where pieces can be exchanged.
  • Repeating moves when ahead. The game ends drawn by itself on threefold repetition or the 50-move rule, with no claim needed.
  • Stalemating a lone king. When you are far ahead, make sure the defending king always has a legal move until you deliver mate.
  • Offering a draw at the wrong moment. You can offer only after your own move, and any move by either player withdraws the offer.
  • Letting the timer run out. When your time per move expires, play pauses and your opponent can wait for you or claim the game.

Ratings and results

Online games are rated. Your Chess rating starts at 1500 and is kept apart from your rating in every other game.

Rating tiers run from Beginner, below 1300, up through Intermediate, Advanced, Expert and Master to Grandmaster at 2100.

A game in which either player never moved is recorded unrated, so leaving in the first seconds is not a rated loss. There is no resign button. Once both sides have moved, leaving the game hands your opponent the win.

If your connection drops, your seat is held for five minutes. If you run out of time against a bare king, or a king with one knight or bishop, the game is drawn.

Rematch opens a new lobby with the colours swapped. Pass & Play games are not rated.

Where to go next

Checkers keeps the two-player duel on the same board, but trades a varied army for forced captures and long jump chains.

Reversi is another two-player board game on OverTime, where a single move can turn a whole line of discs to your colour.