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Play Chess With Friends: Online Challenges, Pass and Play and Two-Player Boards

Rated games against strangers have their place, but they aren't why most people fall in love with chess. That usually happens across a kitchen table, or in a long-running rivalry with a mate who lives two hundred miles away and still hasn't forgiven you for that rook endgame in March.

Playing someone you know changes the game entirely. You learn their habits, they learn yours, and the result stops being a number and starts being a story. Here's how to set it up properly — online, on one device, or over a real board.

Three Ways to Play With Someone You Know

The first is a direct online challenge. You generate a link or send an invitation to their username, they accept, and you're playing within seconds regardless of distance. The second is pass and play: one phone, tablet or laptop, two people, taking turns on the same screen. The third is a physical board, which remains the best version and requires the two of you to be in the same room.

Each suits a different situation, and most people who play regularly end up using all three depending on the week.

Sending a Challenge Online

Every serious platform has this. You choose the time control and whether the game is rated, then generate a link and send it by message, email or whatever else. Your friend clicks it and the board opens. No account needed on some sites, though both players need one if you want the result to count towards your ratings.

Two settings are worth checking before you press start. First, rated or unrated — friendly games between mismatched players are usually better unrated, since nobody enjoys watching their number collapse. Second, colour selection: alternating white and black across a series keeps things fair, because the first move is a genuine, measurable advantage.

Once you've got a regular opponent, the habit builds itself. A standing arrangement to play chess every Sunday evening does more for your development than any amount of solo study, because you'll start preparing specifically for the way that one person plays.

Pass and Play on One Device

Pass and play mode turns a single phone into a chessboard for two. The screen flips between turns so both players see the position from their own side, moves are validated automatically, and nobody has to remember whether en passant was still legal. For teaching a child or settling an argument on a train, it's ideal.

It has one real limitation: no clock discipline. Without a physical timer sitting between you, games drift, and a casual match can eat an hour before anyone notices. If you're using pass and play regularly, set a time control anyway. Ten minutes each keeps the game brisk and stops one player agonising while the other checks their phone.

Correspondence Games for Busy People

Daily or correspondence chess gives each player a day or three per move. Notifications tell you when it's your turn; you look at the position over lunch, make a move, and forget about it. A single game might run three weeks, and you can happily juggle five or six at once.

This format suits adults with jobs and children far better than anything live, and it produces noticeably better chess. With no clock pressure you can actually calculate variations properly, which builds the habit of looking before you move. Just agree upfront whether opening books and analysis boards are permitted — rules vary by platform and by friendship.

House Rules Worth Agreeing First

• Touch-move. Official chess requires you to move a piece you've touched. Casual games usually don't. Decide before, not during.
• Takebacks. Either allowed or not. Half-allowed leads to arguments every single time.
• Draw offers. Agree whether repeated offers are annoying or acceptable — most people find more than two per game irritating.
• Analysis afterwards. A five-minute review of the critical moment turns a friendly game into a lesson for both of you.
• Clocks. Even a casual game benefits from one. It prevents the slow-play stalemate where nobody wants to commit.

Handling a Mismatch in Strength

The most common reason friendly chess dies is that one player wins every game. It stops being fun for both people surprisingly quickly. The traditional fix is odds, and it works remarkably well.

Odds games were standard practice in the nineteenth century and there's nothing patronising about them. They also improve the stronger player, who has to work considerably harder for the win, and they teach the weaker player what a material advantage actually feels like to convert.

Teaching Someone From Scratch

If you're the one introducing a friend, partner or child to the game, resist the temptation to explain everything at once. The standard mistake is a twenty-minute lecture covering en passant and castling rules before a single piece has moved, by which point the other person has quietly decided chess is homework.

A better approach is to start with pawns and one other piece type, play a few tiny games on a reduced board, and add pieces as the basics land. Explain the goal — trap the king — before explaining the mechanics, because otherwise the moves have no context. And let them win occasionally. A learner who has never won has no reason to come back.

Beyond the Two of You

Once a regular game is established, the natural expansion is a small group. Three or four people rotating through a mini-tournament produces a surprising amount of competitive tension, and it fixes the problem of one player being permanently stronger — with three opponents, everyone loses to somebody.

Local clubs are the next step up, and there are hundreds across the UK, most of which meet weekly in a pub function room or a community centre and charge very little. The standard is usually higher than newcomers expect and the welcome is usually warmer than they fear. Online team leagues offer a similar sense of belonging without the travel, if a Tuesday evening in a draughty hall doesn't appeal.

Keeping a Running Score

A one-off game is pleasant. A season is addictive. The simplest structure that works is a first-to-ten ladder: play whenever both of you are free, keep a tally somewhere shared, and start a new season once someone reaches ten wins. Draws count as half to each, which stops anyone playing for a bailout when they're worse.

A running score changes how the games feel. Individual results matter less, so nobody tilts after one bad evening, but the cumulative standing matters more, which keeps both players trying. It also exposes patterns — if you're 2-8 down as Black, that's a concrete thing to work on rather than a vague sense of being worse.

Add one refinement if you like: the loser of each game chooses the time control for the next one. It hands a small advantage to whoever is behind, which keeps a mismatched pairing competitive without anyone having to admit they need a handicap.

Turning It Into a Habit

The friends who keep playing are the ones who put it in the calendar. A weekly game, a running score kept in a note somewhere, and a rule that whoever loses picks the time control next week — that's usually enough structure to keep a rivalry alive for years.

If your friend is starting from zero, send them our guide on how to play chess first so the first game isn't a massacre. Between matches, you can sharpen up by playing chess against the computer, or simply play chess online against strangers to keep your eye in. When you both want to get properly better, work through chess openings and tactics together and compare notes — shared study beats solo study nearly every time.

Whichever route you take, the important thing is to actually start. Send the link, agree a time, and play chess this week rather than next.