About LocalChess
A free, fast, privacy-friendly chess game that runs entirely in your browser.
LocalChess is a complete game of chess you can play instantly — no signup, no ads, and no download. Play against the computer at three difficulty levels, or share one screen with a friend for a two-player game. Every rule is built in, including castling, en passant, pawn promotion, check, checkmate, and stalemate, so you always get a full, legal game. Read our engine architecture guide to learn how it works.
What makes it different
- Runs 100% in your browser — no server, no tracking of your games (see our Privacy Policy), and it keeps working offline once loaded.
- Play the computer — pick Easy, Medium, or Hard and choose your colour.
- Two-player hotseat — two people play on the same device.
- PGN & FEN — import and export games and positions to study or share.
- Post-game analysis — review a finished game move by move.
- Themes & sound — multiple board themes, piece styles, and chess clocks.
Our philosophy
Chess should be free and available to everyone, everywhere, without friction. LocalChess exists to be the quickest way to get a real game going — open a tab and play. No account walls, no paywalls, no data harvesting. Have questions? Check our Frequently Asked Questions.
Who writes the guides, and how
The guides on this site are written and maintained by the same small team that builds the LocalChess engine. We are not a publisher with a newsroom, and we would rather tell you exactly how the content is made than imply otherwise.
- Every position is machine-verified. Board diagrams in our guides are generated from FEN at build time and validated by the same rules engine that runs the game. If a position in an article were illegal, the site would fail to build. You can open any diagram in the real board with one click.
- We stick to established theory. Opening lines, tactical patterns, and endgame technique are drawn from standard, widely-documented chess knowledge. Where a guide covers a named entity or historical game, we link the corresponding reference so you can check it yourself.
- We do not invent evidence. No fabricated statistics, no invented tournament results, no made-up quotes. If we are not confident something is true, we leave it out.
- Corrections are welcome and acted on. Chess writing gets details wrong — a transposed move, a mislabelled variation. If you find one, send it to us and we will fix the page.
- Pages carry real dates. Each guide shows when it was published and when it was last substantively updated, taken from the repository history rather than refreshed automatically to look current.
What we can offer that a general chess site cannot is the engine itself: the tool and the writing are built by the same people, so a guide can hand you a position and you can play it immediately, for free, without an account.
How to play
- Choose 2 Players or Play Bot in the controls panel.
- If you pick the bot, set the difficulty and which colour you want to play.
- Click a piece to see its legal moves highlighted, then click a target square to move.
- Use Undo, Flip Board, and the move list to review the game.
- When the game ends, press Analyze game to see where it turned.