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

Check out this article for more information about cheating in Daily Chess: What counts as cheating on Chess.com?

Daily Chess, also known as Turn-based or Correspondence-style chess, is similar to traditional mail-in chess. Games can last days or even months, with players having several days to make each move. For example, in a game with a 3-day per move setting, you have 72 hours to make your move. Once you move, your clock resets to 3 days.  Unlike Live Chess, the time limit in Daily Chess is per move, not for the entire game.

Daily games allow you to log out and return later to make your move. This flexibility often leads players to manage multiple Daily games simultaneously. While you have more time to analyze and plan, you may NOT use any engine to analyze your position in a Daily game. For more details on what is allowed, please refer to our guidelines


Starting a new Daily game

  • Hover over Play on the left-hand menu and click Play or click on New Game on your homepage- This will take you to the Play menu where you can select your game.

  • 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 below:

  • 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

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

If you want to customize the challenge you're sending out, you can change the options before you click Play

Setting

What it Does

Type

Choose from Standard Chess, Chess960, or other Variants. You can also select an Odds game or create 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

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 Random

I Play As

This is only available for unrated games. Select what color you want to play as, or leave it 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 this off if you don’t want the game to affect your rating.

Some of the custom options are only available for unrated games.

Allow Takebacks

This option is available only for unrated games. Takeback games let players undo moves that have been made on the board, often used for teaching purposes.

Move Speed

This will filter players whose average move speed is equal to or slower than your selected option. You can check your own average move speed in your Stats.

Check out this article to learn more about your Stats: What does my Stats page show?

Minimum Games Played

Enter a number to only match with players who have finished that many games or more.

Avoid Time-Outs

Enable this to 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.

Check out this article to learn about open challenges: What is an open challenge?

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