Board Game Arena

At some point, it had to happen! BGA is now very happy to host a timeless classic, Chess.

No need to tell you about a strategy board game that is one of the most popular in the world! 'Checkmate' has become part of our everyday language, even for non gamers.

Sure, some people will ask: but why did you do that? There are already so many places where I can play chess on the internet!
Well, because we can! BGA is of course perfectly suited for classic games, it was interesting to implement, it was a lot of fun to rediscover this great game, and believe it or not, we got some really good feedback about our implementation of Checkers! A lot of players love their classics, and furthermore, all starting positions from Chess960 are available to break the habits of those who can already play classic chess in their sleep just from memory.

Some BGA old timers will even remember that at some point, people tried to play Chess using ASCII characters through the BGA chat: that was too strong a need to ignore forever

Also, something tells me that you won't have long to wait before having to guess the name of another "next game"!

And finally, we would like to thank phil_s_stein and ChazM who started working on Chess in the BGA studio two years ago. Even though they didn't get to the point where the game was playable, we reused some of their work, especially images for pieces and the game icon, which looks great. Thanks guys!

PS: a small warning on timers for Chess on BGA. The "fast" mode is REALLY fast, so that you can play "blitz" games on BGA. "normal" is quite fast (15-20 minutes games), and "slow" is supposed to allow you to play a game in 30-40 minutes. And of course, we recommend turn-based mode for players who like to take their time to think before making their move!

For me, Chess is a "King of Abstract game", but not for play online, at least isn't nice for somo cheaters

Oh good... now all the Chessnards will flood the site and bring the servers even slower...

klkitchens wrote:Oh good... now all the Chessnards will flood the site and bring the servers even slower...

klkitchens, that's not very welcoming of you...
And the servers have been recently beefed up, some extra load should be handled just fine.

bad news, there are already so many sites where you can play chess, this site should be for modern board games, not for abstracts.

not happy about this, there are so many great games on Boardgamegeek that could be represented here and of all games they pick chess, really not happy about that.

Kurosawa wrote:not happy about this, there are so many great games on Boardgamegeek that could be represented here and of all games they pick chess, really not happy about that.

Well Kurosawa, that's your right not to be happy, but please do not be grumpy

We think that BGA is great for new and old games (we even have a great and very enjoyable implementation of Senet). Not everyone likes the same things, and we like a little bit of eveything.

I'm sure that a lot of players will enjoy playing Chess on BGA, and I hope that some of the next games to come will make you happy, even if they don't appeal to some other players. Also, if you feel that some game should really be on BGA, there is always BGA Studio

Well I would just like to thank the staff of bga for running such a great site and letting us play free if we so choose. Let them make others happy with whatever games they choose to implement as everyone has their own taste. KUDOS GUYS!!

Thanks a lot satyre11

Hey this is great! So glad someone else picked up my horrible code and ran with it. This is a great addition to the site.