The Chess Archive is the famous games of chess history on a board you can turn, and a place to play, practise and keep your own games. Everything here is free, and nothing needs an account.
Getting started
Open the site and pick a game. That is really all it takes — no sign-up, no download. The menu at the top left of every page goes everywhere else.
- Answer the two first questions (or skip them). The first time you come back, the site asks how much you want on screen — Simple, with just the essentials, or Complete, with every control — and whether you want the board in 3D or flat 2D. Nothing is locked either way.
- Change your mind any time with the View button: Simple or Complete, how big the controls are, a calmer board, and outlines round the pieces. The moon and sun button switches between dark and light.
- Install it, if you like. Install at the top of the page puts the site on your phone's home screen or your computer like an app. The library, the games and the puzzles then open even without a connection.
Where to begin, depending on you
- Never played? Learn shows how every piece moves, one at a time.
- Know the moves? Play the engine, or try today's daily game.
- Here for the history? Open any game in the library and press play.
Watching a game
Every game in the library plays out on the board move by move, with a note on the moves that mattered and why. Press play, or step through at your own pace. Drag the board to turn it; the camera button picks one of six views.
The keys
| Space or K | Play and pause |
| ← → | One move back, one move on |
| Home End | The start, the end |
| , . | Slower, faster |
| V | Read the moves aloud (on to begin with) |
| M | Sound on or off |
| C | The forces on the board: who attacks and defends each square |
| F | The board over the whole screen |
| W | Watch together, or teach a lesson |
| / | Find any control by name |
Review any game
Review this game runs a chess engine over it, in your own browser. You get a graph of each side's winning chances, and the moves that changed them are marked — slip, mistake or big mistake — each with a sentence saying what went wrong. It also finds the turning point and how hard each key move was to find. It works on the famous games, on games you imported, and on your own games, as often as you like.
Watch together, and lessons
Press W for a room link or QR code. Everyone who opens it sees the same game at the same move. Make this a lesson puts you in charge: the others follow what you show them, and a student can offer you one of their own games to go through.
Play on from here under a game takes over its position against the engine — to find out whether you could have held it.
Playing
Three ways to play, all on the same board. Every game you play is kept for you — see Your games.
Against the engine
Play → the engine. Choose an opponent from the ladder — each is named after a player from history, from Kermur de Légal (level 1.2) up to the full engine (level 10), on the same scale as your level — choose White or Black, and start. The legends open the way they really did, from their own games. Beat one and their most famous game is waiting for you in the library.
- Take back undoes your last move (or press Z) — the game then no longer counts towards your level. Resign ends the game.
- Close the tab mid-game and the game waits for you: the page offers to pick it up, and Your games lists every unfinished one.
With a friend
Play → a friend makes a room and gives you a link and a QR code. Send it; whoever opens it first takes the other side. Pick a clock — from 3 + 2 blitz to 30 + 0 classical, or none — before the first move. Either of you can ask for a move back or offer a rematch, and the colours swap for the next game. No account is needed on either side. If you lose your connection, open the same link and you are back in your seat.
On Lichess
Play → Lichess plays real opponents from Lichess on this board. Press Connect Lichess and allow it to play games for you — nothing else is asked. Then find a game at the time control you like, or challenge someone by name.
These are real Lichess games. With Rated ticked they change your Lichess rating, just as if you had played on Lichess itself.
Your games
Every game you play here — against the engine, a friend or on Lichess — is saved as you play it, move by move. You do not have to press anything. Open Your games (in the account menu once you are signed in, and linked from your profile and the engine page) to find them all.
- Unfinished games are at the top, with Continue. An engine game carries on where it stopped. A friend's game goes back to the room while your friend may still be in it; after that you can play it on against the engine instead. A Lichess game reopens on the Lichess page.
- Review opens a finished game on the board with the full review.
- Copy PGN copies the game in the standard format every chess program reads.
- ✕ forgets a game, on every device you are signed in on.
- Search finds games by opponent, by opening — every game's opening is named, with its code — by how it ended, or by a word in your notes.
- Filter by won, lost, drawn, starred, rated, or by where you played.
- ☆ stars a game to find it again, and Note keeps a note on it. Both are yours alone: they follow you to your other devices and never appear on your public page.
- Download as PGN saves every game the search and filter show, as one file.
- Head to head lists everybody you have played more than once, with the score. A friend in a rated game is named once the game ends, if their page is public.
Games you played elsewhere
On the library, Import your games brings in your games from Lichess or Chess.com by username, or from a PGN file. They appear in the library beside the famous ones, and can be reviewed the same way. Imported games stay in your browser; they are not uploaded.
Practice
- Learn
- How every piece moves, one lesson each. Pick up a piece and the board lights every square it can reach — then castling, en passant and promotion.
- Puzzles
- The finishing blows of the famous games. The position is the real one; find the move that was actually played.
- Your own mistakes
- Import your games and the site finds the moves that cost you, then sets them as puzzles. Any good move is accepted, not only the engine's first choice. The ones you miss come back, spaced out, until you find them every time.
- Daily
- One position a day from a famous game, just before its famous moment. Play the next five moves in six tries, then say whose game it was. The same puzzle for everyone, new at midnight. Win days in a row for a streak.
- Guess
- Take the winner's side in a famous game and play what you think they played. Every guess is answered by the note written about that move.
- Study
- Every annotated game as a page you can read, move by move, grouped by opening and theme.
- News
- The games worth watching from the big events, day by day, each ready to open and review.
Your account
You never need one. What an account adds is keeping things: your games, puzzles, streaks and lessons are saved to it and follow you to every device you sign in on. Clear your browser or get a new phone, sign in, and it is all there.
- Sign in with the account button at the top right — by email and password (we send a link to confirm your address), or with your Lichess account.
- Choose your username. Straight after you first sign in, you are asked for the name
you will be known by here: on the leaderboard, on your games, and to anyone who likes them.
3 to 20 letters, numbers,
-or_, starting with a letter, and nobody else can have it. You can fix a typo in the first hour; after that it can change once a day. - Decide whether to be public. Public puts you on the leaderboard and lets people watch and like your finished games. It is off unless you turn it on, and the switch is on the account page whenever you want to change it.
Games you played before signing in are added to your account the first time you sign in on that browser.
Your page
Everybody with a username has a page at chesszz.com/@/username: your level and how it has moved, your score, your finished games, and — if you add them under About you on the account page — a line or two about yourself and your country. A Lichess account you linked by signing in with it is shown with its live ratings.
On your own page you also see what only you see: your streaks, your practice, and the games you imported, which stay in your browser. You can put a summary of those on your page — how many, how they went, your openings and your rarest finds — and take it off again. Never the games themselves, and never the names you imported them under.
Account settings
At the bottom of the account page, under Account settings:
- Password — change it with your current one. Every other device is signed out.
- Email address — we send a link to the new address, and nothing changes until it is opened there. Your old address is told when it happens.
- Sign out everywhere else — for a computer that was not yours.
- Download your data — everything your account holds, as one file.
- Close your account — deletes it and everything on it for good. Games a friend played against you stay in their history, without your name.
Level, score and the leaderboard
Every signed-in player has two numbers. They measure different things, on purpose.
Score
How much you have done. Points for playing, practising and being liked. It only ever goes up: the more you play, the higher it gets, and a loss never takes anything away.
Level
How well you play, from 0 to 10, like a chess rating on a scale of its own. It starts at 0, climbs as you play, and unlike the score it can go down after a loss. How it works.
How points are earned
| For | Points |
|---|---|
| Playing — every finished game | |
| Playing it (20 half-moves or more) | 10 |
| Playing a short one (10 to 19 half-moves) | 5 |
| Winning against the engine | + its Elo ÷ 40 — 20 up to 75 |
| Winning on Lichess | + 25 |
| Winning against a friend | + 15 |
| A draw | + half a win |
| Practice | |
| Each puzzle solved | 3 |
| Each daily game won | 5 |
| Each lesson done | 5 |
| Each of your own mistakes learned | 4 |
| Each master move guessed | 1 |
| Likes | |
| Each like another player gives one of your games | 5 — up to 10 likes a game |
So beating Edward Lasker (about 2200) in a full game earns 10 + 55 = 65 points, and losing to him still earns 10.
What keeps it fair
- Every finished game is replayed on our server before it counts. A game with an illegal move earns nothing, and a checkmate has to really be mate.
- A game needs five moves each to earn anything, and only your first 20 finished games of each day earn points — the rest are still kept and shown.
- You cannot like your own games, a player can like a game only once, and only players with a username can like.
- Forgetting a game hides it but keeps the points it earned. You did play it.
The leaderboard and player pages
Players in the menu shows the top public players on two boards: by level, for anybody with ten rated games or more, and by score — and where you stand. Press a name to open that player's page: their level and how it has moved, their score and where it came from, and their recent finished games with what each did to their level. Press Watch to play a game back on the board with its review, and the heart to like it. Only players who chose to be public are listed or can be opened.
Your level
Your level is how well you play, as a number from 0 to 10 with two decimals — 4.37, say. It is our own scale: no three-digit ratings to learn.
The scale
The engine's opponents sit on it, so a level means someone you can play:
| Opponent | Level |
|---|---|
| Kermur de Légal | 1.2 |
| Lionel Kieseritzky | 2.4 |
| Adolf Anderssen | 3.6 |
| Paul Morphy | 4.6 |
| Richard Réti | 5.2 |
| Edward Lasker | 6.8 |
| The engine, unrestrained | 10 |
Beat an opponent about as often as you lose to them and, in time, that is your level.
Why it starts at 0 and climbs
Behind the number is the same maths Lichess uses for ratings (Glicko-2): a best guess at your strength, and how sure that guess is. What we show is what you have proven — the guess, less the doubt still in it. A new player's doubt is large, so they start at 0. Every game makes us surer, so your level rises as you play, towards your real strength, and then moves only a little each game: about +0.04 for a win against an equal and −0.05 for a loss.
What counts
- Finished games of five moves each or more, against the engine, on Lichess against a player with a Lichess rating, or with a friend when you are both signed in.
- A game with a friend is refereed by our server: it holds the board, checks every move and decides the result itself, so it is rated against your friend's level as it stood. It does not count if either of you is signed out, if both chairs are the same account, or if a different account takes a chair part-way through. A move taken back that your friend agreed to is fine. The same two players can play 10 rated games a day; after that the games are still kept, just not rated, until the next day.
- Not games against the engine where you took a move back, or games played on from a famous position.
- Games against the engine run in your own browser, so a level can reach 7.00 at most until you have played five rated games with friends, which our server saw for itself.
- A long break (over three months) lowers your level slowly — about a fifth of a level after a year away — and a few games bring it back.
Your level shows under every game you finish, beside each game in Your games, and on your player page with a graph of how it has moved. It works signed out too; sign in to keep it on every device and to be on the level board.
What is kept, and where
- Signed out, everything stays in your browser. Nothing about your games or progress is sent to us.
- Signed in, your games and progress are also saved to your account, so they reach your other devices.
- Imported games stay in your browser either way.
- Public shows your username, level, score, record and finished games. Never your email address, and never an unfinished game. Turn it off and your page disappears from everyone but you.
- Privacy choices, at the bottom of the menu, sets what the site may count about visits.
- Yours to take or delete: Account settings downloads everything your account holds, and closing the account deletes it.
- The whole of it is in the privacy policy.
Questions
Why did my game earn no points?
Most often it was too short: a game needs five moves each. It may also have been your 21st finished game that day, or it was not finished — only finished games score. Games played while signed out count once you sign in on that browser.
My game is not on my public page.
Player pages show finished games only, and only once your profile is public. An unfinished game is in Your games, waiting to be continued.
Why does my score go up when I lose?
Because the score rewards playing. How well you play is your level, which does go down after a loss.
Why is my level still 0?
Before your first rated game it is 0, and a first loss keeps it there: win a game and you are on the scale. Games against the engine with a move taken back, games played on from a famous position, and games with a friend when one of you is signed out do not count. What counts.
Can I change my username?
Yes, on the account page. Freely in the first hour, then once a day. Links to your old player page stop working when you change it.
My games are gone.
If you were signed in, sign in again on this browser and they come back from your account. If you were signed out and the browser's data was cleared, they were only ever in that browser, and are gone with it. Imported games can simply be imported again.
Does playing on Lichess here affect my Lichess rating?
Only if Rated is ticked when you look for a game. Untick it for casual games.
Is any of this going to cost money?
No. The review, playing, the puzzles and the daily game are free and staying free, with no ads. What stays free is that promise, written down.