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What is Daily Chess?
What is Daily Chess?
Updated over a week ago

Daily Chess is also referred to as Turn-based and Correspondence-style chess. The latter term highlights the similarity between this type of Internet chess and games played by letters sent through the mail. In both cases, games can take days or even months, with players having a number of days in which to make each move.

For example, in a Daily game configured for 3 days per move, you would have a full 72 hours to make your move. Once you move, your clock resets back to the full 3 days. Unlike Live chess, the time limit in Daily chess refers to the amount of time per move, not the total time that you have to play the whole game.

With Daily games, you can log out of the site and your game will still be there when you come back. You can check on your game throughout the day whenever you have time to make a move. It's easy to see why people often play many Daily games at once!

While Daily games allow much more time for you to analyze and plan your move, you still may NOT use any engine to analyze your position in a Daily game! Please see here for further details on what is allowed in a Daily game.

Starting a new Daily game

From your home-page, hover over the 'Play' icon, and click on 'New Game' or 'Play'

This will take you to the Play menu where you can select your game.

From there, click on the Time Setting drop down to make sure you have the correct time setting selected:

Be sure you have selected one of the Daily Time settings highlighted above!

Once you have chosen your time setting, you can either click 'Play' to find a match, OR, you can further customize your game by clicking 'custom game'

Custom options

If you want to change what kind of game challenge you're sending out, you can change the options before you click 'play'

  • Type -Choose Standard Chess or Chess960 , or other Variants. You can also choose an Odds game, or a custom position.

  • Time (Days per move) - your options range from 1 to 14 days for each move. Three days per move is the default.

  • 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'.

  • I Play As - this is only available for unrated games. Select what color you want to play as, or leave as random.

  • Rating Range- choose a range of ratings your opponent must fall between. (It's usually best to seek players who are within 200 points of your own current rating.)

  • Rated - toggle off if you don’t want the game to affect your rating. Note: Some of the custom options are only available for unrated games.

  • Allow takebacks - this option is only available for unrated games. Takeback games allow for players to take back or ‘undo’ moves that have been played on the board. This setting is often used for teaching purposes.

  • Move Speed - this will filter for players whose average move speed is equal to or lower than whatever option you select. You can check your own average move speed in your Stats.

  • Minimum Games Played - enter a number to only match with players who have finished that many games or more.

  • Avoid Time-Outs - enable this avoid players with a high percentage (over 10%) of time-outs.

  • Premium Members Only - toggling this will match you only with a gold, platinum or diamond member of the site. You must be a premium member yourself to see this option.

Note: Be aware that putting narrow restrictions in the settings may cause long wait times to find an opponent who matches your requirements.

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