To start a new game, just click the 'New Game' button on the top of your home screen!
OR, hover over ‘Play’ on the left-hand side of the screen, and select 'Play'
This will take you to a new screen where you can choose some options.
If you like the settings as they are, you can click ‘Play’ to start a new game right away! Otherwise, you can change the time settings by clicking on the dropdown above the Play button.
Clicking on the time will give you more time options, if you want to play a faster or slower game:
Live times show the total amount of time per side. Daily times show the amount of time each player has per move. For more info on the different time settings, click here. To learn about Daily games, click here.
Custom Game
Playing a Custom Game will allow you to further customize what kind of game you want to play.
Opponent: Random - the default setting is to match you with a random player. You can change this to challenge one of your friends instead by clicking on the word 'random'.
Rating Range - here you can choose a range for the rating of your opponent. There are many other options in this window if you are playing a Daily game.
Rated - toggle off if you don’t want the game to affect your rating.
I play as - Choose your color (this option will only appear if you toggle "rated" to OFF)
Variants - By clicking on the game type dropdown (where it says Standard in the image above) you can choose to play one of many kinds of variants such as Chess960, 3-check and more. Read about Variants here.
Join a Tournament
This will show you the open tournaments that you can join. More info here.