Play chess online for free. Start as a guest, challenge other players, play instantly against the Wood bot, or train with chess puzzles. Choose Bullet, Blitz, Rapid, Classic, custom or unlimited games.
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WoodChess is a free online chess site built around three things: playing real games against real people, drilling tactics until you stop missing them, and reading through games move by move to work out what actually happened. No plugin, no download — it runs in the browser.
Games are live. Post a challenge at the time control you want and someone takes it, or take one already waiting in the lobby. Bullet and Blitz if you have five minutes, Rapid and Classic when you want to think, Unlimited when a clock would only get in the way. Each control keeps its own rating.
If nobody is around, the Wood bot answers straight away, so a game is always one click out rather than a wait.
The puzzle room has tactical positions from real games, the 1001 Checkmates collection, and a large set of Mate in 2 problems. Solve while signed in and the difficulty follows your rating instead of staying random, and positions you have already seen drop out of the rotation.
Paste or upload a PGN — one game, an annotated study, or a multi-game file — and walk through it with variations, comments and annotation marks intact. Play your own moves from any point to see where they lead, then export the whole thing back to PGN.
You can play a game and solve tactics as a guest, without registering. A free account adds ratings, a game history you can replay, puzzle progress that persists, and the ability to pick up an unfinished game on another device.