Play Chess With Friends: Link Games, Pass and Play, and 2-Player Boards
Playing a stranger from a matchmaking queue and playing someone you know are different games. Against a friend you already know their habits, the trash talk lands, and nobody resigns on move nine because the position got slightly awkward. The practical question is how to get the two of you onto the same board when you are in different cities, on the same sofa, or three time zones apart. There are four workable answers, and they suit quite different situations.
Option one: a shared link
The lowest-friction method by a distance. One person starts a game, gets a link, and sends it by message. The other opens it in a browser and the board syncs move for move on both screens. Neither of you needs to create an account, install anything, or find each other by username.
This solves the problem that used to make casual online chess irritating: the friend-request dance. On rated platforms, playing a specific person means both of you registering, one of you finding the other's exact username, sending a challenge, agreeing a time control and hoping the other is online. A link skips every step of that. You can play chess against a friend by sending them a URL, with no registration on either side.
What you give up is persistence. No account means no rating between you, no archive of who has won more, and no notification when it is your turn. For a one-off game or an evening of several, none of that matters. For an ongoing rivalry you want to keep score of, it does — write the results down somewhere yourselves, or use a platform with accounts.
Option two: pass and play on one device
When you are physically together and nobody has brought a set, pass-and-play mode shares a single screen. Both sides move on the same board, the computer stays out of it entirely, and the software's only job is enforcing whose turn it is and which moves are legal.
Two features make this pleasant rather than awkward. A flip-board button turns the board around so the player with Black gets their own pieces facing them — without it, one of you is reading the position upside down all game. And legal-move highlighting settles rules disputes instantly, which matters more than you would think when one player is a beginner.
The underrated advantage of pass and play is that it needs no connection at all. A train through a tunnel, a plane, a cottage with no signal — none of it costs you anything, because both players and the whole game are on one device — two people can play chess on a single screen with the connection switched off entirely.
Option three: a physical board
Worth stating plainly, because it remains the best version of the experience when it is available. A real board removes the screen entirely, makes the position easier to see at a glance, and adds the small ceremony of setting up pieces. A tournament-standard set is inexpensive and lasts decades.
Two conventions are worth agreeing before the first move. Touch-move is the tournament rule: touch a piece and you must move it if it has a legal move; touch an enemy piece and you must capture it if you legally can. Casual players often ignore it, which is fine — but agree which way you are playing beforehand rather than in the middle of an argument. And decide whether takebacks are permitted, because the answer differs between two beginners learning together and two people playing seriously.
Option four: correspondence chess across time zones
When friends are in genuinely incompatible time zones, real-time play collapses under logistics. Correspondence chess solves it by removing the clock: each player moves whenever they can, with days rather than minutes per move.
This needs a platform with accounts, since somebody has to store the position between sessions. The trade is worth it for the specific case: a game can run for weeks, both players get to think properly, and the quality is usually far higher than either would manage in a live ten-minute game. It also works well between players of unequal strength, because the weaker player can take their time.
Handling a big strength gap
The most common way a friendly game stops being fun is one player winning every time. Four fixes, in increasing order of how much they change the game:
- Time odds. The stronger player gets three minutes to the weaker player's ten. This is the least intrusive handicap because the position stays symmetrical, and it works remarkably well — chess is much harder in a hurry.
- Material odds. The stronger player removes a piece before the game starts. A knight or a rook is the traditional handicap, and the historical convention is to remove the queen's rook. Roughly speaking, a rook's worth of material bridges a very substantial gap in strength.
- Takebacks for one side. The weaker player may retract one move per game. Slightly artificial, but it removes the demoralising effect of a single blunder ending everything on move twelve.
- Play the same side of a fixed opening. Both of you agree the first six moves in advance, so the game starts from a balanced known position and the weaker player is not lost before it begins.
A separate approach: play as a team against a computer opponent instead. Two people discussing moves against a bot is a genuinely good way to teach, because the reasoning gets spoken out loud. Our guide to playing chess against the computer covers choosing an appropriate difficulty setting.
Time controls for friendly games
Getting this wrong is a common way to make an evening drag or fly past. Rough guidance:
- Ten minutes each is the sensible default for a casual online game — long enough to think, short enough that a session fits several games.
- Three or five minutes is blitz. Fun, chaotic, and a bad way to learn, since it rewards speed over accuracy. Save it for when you both already know what you are doing.
- Fifteen minutes plus ten seconds a move is the friendliest serious control. The increment means neither of you loses a winning position purely on the clock, which is a miserable way to end a good game.
- No clock at all is perfectly reasonable in person, provided neither player is inclined to think for eleven minutes over a routine recapture.
Teaching a friend who has never played
If you are the one introducing the game, resist the urge to explain everything before starting. The rules make far more sense on a board than in a lecture.
Start with a mini-game: pawns only, first to reach the far side wins. It teaches pawn movement and captures in about four minutes. Add rooks, then bishops, then the rest. Play the first full game with the board dotting legal moves, so the new player learns by seeing rather than by being corrected.
Point out just one thing after each game — a single mistake, not a list of six. And send them the rules of chess to read on their own time, along with the four-week beginner plan if they want a structured route rather than to wander.
Etiquette that makes friendly games better
None of this is in the Laws of Chess, and all of it makes the difference between a friendship-enhancing hobby and a slightly tense evening.
Do not take back moves unless you both agreed takebacks are on. Do not analyse the game out loud while it is still in progress. If you are clearly lost and there is nothing to play for, resign — dragging a hopeless position out for twenty moves is a way of making your opponent do homework. And if you are clearly winning, do not slow down to enjoy it; finish cleanly and set up the next game.
One more, particularly relevant online: agree in advance whether engine assistance is off, which it obviously should be. It is the fastest way to make games with a friend completely pointless.
Quick summary: a shared link is the fastest way to play someone remotely with no accounts; pass and play covers being in the same room without a board; correspondence handles awkward time zones; and time odds are the least intrusive way to even out a strength gap. Other guides are listed on Bet365.
Common questions
Can I play chess with a friend without an account?
Yes. Link-based boards let one player start a game and send a URL; the other opens it in a browser. Neither side registers or installs anything.
What is pass and play?
Two players sharing one device, taking turns on the same board with no computer opponent involved. It needs no connection, which makes it useful offline.
How do we play if we are in different time zones?
Use correspondence chess, where each side moves within days rather than minutes. This requires a platform with accounts, since the position has to be stored between sessions.
How do we make games fair when one of us is much better?
Time odds first — the stronger player gets a third of the clock. If that is not enough, remove a piece from the stronger side, traditionally the queen's rook.
Where can we find a free board quickly?
Several browser boards open straight into a two-player game with no sign-up. Our overview of free online chess options compares what they offer and what they leave out.