Enzoyour coach
To move, tap a piece and then tap the square you want, or drag the piece. Dots show the legal moves, and rings mark captures. The last move is highlighted, and a king in check glows red.
Choose your opponent in the settings. Computer plays you against an engine. Pick Stockfish 18, one of the strongest chess engines in the world, at any rating from 500 to full strength, or the lighter Built-in engine at Casual, Club or Strong. Two players lets two people share one screen.
Your game is saved as you play, so you can close the page and pick up where you left off.
The scoresheet names the opening as it develops, recognizing it even when the moves come in a different order.
Tap any move on the Scoresheet to see the board as it was after that move, and step through with the arrows under the board or your keyboard's arrow keys. Back to the game returns you to the current position. Continue from here takes back every later move so you can play on from that point.
Once a game is over, the scoresheet opens an analysis board instead. Tap any move, or Analyze the game on the result card, then move either side’s pieces to try other ideas. The evaluation bar and Stockfish’s best move follow along, and the finished game is never changed.
Draws follow tournament rules. When the same position occurs for the third time, or fifty moves pass with no capture or pawn move, the player to move may Claim draw, or play on. The game is drawn automatically only after a fivefold repetition or 75 such moves. You can also Offer draw: in a two-player game your opponent accepts or declines; Stockfish accepts after move 20 if the position is level, or at any point if it is clearly worse.
To give up a game, press Resign and then Confirm resign. In a two-player game, the player whose turn it is resigns. Changed your mind? Undo takes the resignation back.
The goal is checkmate: attack the opposing king so that it has no way to escape. Light always moves first, and players alternate one move at a time.
In Enzo Chess the two sides are called Light and Dark. Chess books, magazines and PGN files call them White and Black, so games you download or import still use those names.
| King | One square in any direction. It may never move into check. |
|---|---|
| Queen | Any distance in a straight line: along ranks, files or diagonals. |
| Rook | Any distance along ranks and files. |
| Bishop | Any distance diagonally, so it stays on one color all game. |
| Knight | In an L shape: two squares one way, then one square sideways. It jumps over pieces. |
| Pawn | One square forward, or two on its first move. It captures one square diagonally forward. |
Castling moves the king two squares toward a rook and puts that rook on the square the king crossed. It's allowed only if neither piece has moved, the squares between them are empty, and the king is not in check, does not pass through an attacked square, and does not land in check. To castle here, move the king two squares.
En passant: when a pawn advances two squares and lands beside an enemy pawn, that pawn may capture it as if it had moved only one square. This is allowed only on the very next move.
Promotion: a pawn that reaches the far side of the board becomes a queen, rook, bishop or knight. The app asks which one you want.
A game is drawn by stalemate (the player to move has no legal moves but is not in check), by threefold repetition of the same position, by the fifty-move rule (fifty moves each with no capture or pawn move), or when neither side has enough material left to checkmate. The app recognizes all of these and ends the game for you.
Chess960, also called Fischer Random, was introduced by world champion Bobby Fischer in 1996. The pieces on the back row are shuffled at the start of each game. That takes memorized opening theory out of play, so you are thinking for yourself from the first move. Every other rule is the same as standard chess.
Those rules allow exactly 960 starting positions. They are numbered 0 to 959, and number 518 is the standard setup. Choose Chess960 under Variant, and each new game starts from a random position. The settings show its number.
After castling, the king and rook end up on the same squares as in standard chess. Castling toward the h-file puts the king on g1 and the rook on f1. Castling toward the a-file puts the king on c1 and the rook on d1. For Dark, the same squares are on the 8th rank.
The usual conditions apply: neither piece has moved, the king is not in check, and it does not pass through or land on an attacked square. Also, every square either piece travels across must be empty, apart from the king and rook themselves. Depending on the setup, the king or rook might move several squares, or not at all.
To castle here, move your king onto the rook you want to castle with. When it's clear which move you mean, you can also move the king straight to its castled square. Castling is written O-O toward the h-file and O-O-O toward the a-file, as in standard chess.
Turn on a clock under Clock in the settings. A time control such as 3+2 means each player starts with 3 minutes and gets 2 extra seconds after every move they make. The second number is called the increment.
| Category | Presets | Feel |
|---|---|---|
| Bullet | 1+0 · 1+1 · 2+1 | Very fast: instinct and quick hands. |
| Blitz | 3+0 · 3+2 · 5+0 · 5+3 | Fast, but there's time for short calculations. |
| Rapid | 10+0 · 10+5 · 15+10 | Room to plan and check your moves. |
| Classical | 30+0 · 30+20 · 90+30 | Deep thinking, as in tournament play. |
Custom lets you choose any starting time from 15 seconds to 3 hours, with up to 60 seconds of increment. The app sorts a custom setting into a category the way Lichess does: it estimates game length as the starting time plus 40 times the increment. Under 3 minutes counts as bullet, under 8 as blitz, and under 25 as rapid; anything longer is classical.
On the same device: choose Two players under Opponent, and pass the phone, tablet or computer back and forth. Add both names under "Names on the scoresheet" so they appear in the game record. Use Flip board if you're sitting across from each other. With a clock on, each player's clock runs on their own turn, just as on a tournament clock.
Online: choose Online under Opponent. Pick your color, the clock and the variant, then press Create online game and send your opponent the link (or the six-character code). When they open it, the game starts. Nobody needs an account, and the two browsers connect directly to each other.
Online: playing someone on another device isn't available yet in Enzo Chess. In the meantime, you can share a finished game: open it in the Archive, then use Copy PGN or Download. Anyone can load that file into Lichess, Chess.com or another chess program to replay it.
Switch to Practice at the top of the page. Your game in progress waits for you, with its clock paused.
New to chess? Start with Learn. Eighteen beginner lessons go from the names of the squares, through how each piece moves (collect the stars in as few moves as you can), castling, en passant and promotion, to check, checkmate and stalemate, what the pieces are worth, and the basic tactics: forks, pins, skewers and discovered attacks. Every step can be retried, and Hint shows the move. A tick marks each lesson you finish. Nine Intermediate lessons follow: the queen’s double attack, discovered and double check, removing the defender, back-rank and smothered mates in two, opening principles, rooks on open files, knight outposts and passed pawns.
Each puzzle begins with your opponent's last move, which is a mistake. Find the move that punishes it. A Mate in 2 puzzle asks for a forced checkmate in two of your moves; Win material asks for the move that wins a piece or more by force. Longer puzzles play your opponent's best defense between your moves.
A wrong move is taken back so you can try again. Hint highlights the piece to move, and Show solution plays out the answer. Filter by theme or difficulty. Puzzles you haven't solved come first, starting with the easier ones.
Each puzzle's rating is an estimate of its difficulty. The puzzles were made from real engine games, and every solution was checked by Stockfish to be the only clearly winning answer.
Choose an opening from the list, grouped by the color you play. Learn highlights each of your moves and plays your opponent's replies. Drill hides the moves so you play the line from memory; a wrong move is taken back, and the book move is shown. Ask Enzo why has your coach explain the idea behind a move.
When you've played enough of a line, Play on against Stockfish starts a real game from that position, at your chosen rating.
Each repertoire has a main line plus the opponent’s most common ways to leave it, such as the Berlin Defense against the Ruy Lopez or the Advance Variation against the French. Choose a line by name, or in Drill mode pick Surprise me and the opponent chooses, as a real one would.
Review uses spaced repetition. A line you drill without a mistake comes back after 1 day, then 3, 7, 16, 35 and 90 days; a slip sends it back to the start. The Review card shows how many lines are due, and Start review goes through them one after another.
Play out the positions every player should know, against Stockfish at full strength: the basic checkmates (queen, rook, and two rooks against a lone king), king-and-pawn endings (key squares, the opposition, the square of the pawn, the rook-pawn fortress), and the two most important rook endings, Lucena and Philidor. Each lesson explains the technique, and the goal is either to win or, as the defender, to hold the draw.
Stockfish checks every move you make. If a move lets the win or the draw slip away, it tells you right away, and Take back lets you try again from there.
When a game ends, tap Game report on the result card, or open the Report tab beside the Scoresheet. It works for any game you open from the Archive, too. Stockfish analyzes every move and shows:
Your own mistakes and blunders become puzzles. In Practice, choose From your games to replay those positions and find the better move. Stockfish accepts its top choice or any move it rates nearly as good.
Every finished game against Stockfish at a set rating counts toward your rating, shown at the top of the Archive tab and beside your name during games. It uses the Elo system: beating a stronger opponent raises it more than beating a weaker one, and a loss to a weaker one costs more. It starts from the level of your first opponent and is marked provisional (with a ?) until you have played ten rated games, because early estimates move a lot.
Games against the built-in engine, against Stockfish at Max, two-player games and imported games don’t count, because those opponents have no calibrated rating. The card suggests a well-matched opponent: about 50 points above your rating.
In the Archive tab, tap Import PGN or FEN. Paste a game in PGN, the standard notation that books, magazines and chess sites use, or open a .pgn file. Files with many games import them all. You can also paste a single position in FEN (Forsyth–Edwards Notation), the one-line description of a board.
Comments, side variations and symbols like ! and ? are skipped, so the main line comes through. If a move in the text is illegal, often a misprint, the game is imported up to that point and the app tells you where it stopped.
Any game you open from the Archive is an analysis board. Step through the moves, or move either side’s pieces to try your own ideas, while the evaluation bar and Stockfish’s best move follow along. The saved game never changes. Imported games also get full game reports.
On any analysis board (a finished game or one opened from the Archive), Stockfish shows its top three moves as arrows on the board, the best in gold, with the lines written out under the board. Tap a line to play its first move. Moves you try appear under Your analysis; Save line to game adds that line to the game’s PGN as a variation, so it comes along when you copy or download the game.
You can also type moves in the box under the board, in notation (Nf3, exd5, O-O, e8=Q) or as squares (e2e4). Each move is announced for screen readers. Under Display, you can turn sounds on or off and choose a board color: Turquoise, Coral, Violet or Chartreuse.
Coach Enzo (under Display, when you play the computer) is your friendly, supportive coach. After each of your moves, Enzo rates it from Best move down to Blunder and shows what Stockfish would have played. Enzo explains mistakes in plain language, and you can ask about the position at any time. The ratings and better moves come from Stockfish; Enzo’s explanations come from Claude, working from Stockfish’s analysis. Enzo’s written explanations and game reviews need Claude, so this web version shows the ratings and Stockfish’s moves without them.
The evaluation bar beside the board shows who stands better according to Stockfish. A number like 1.5 means an advantage worth about a pawn and a half, and M3 means checkmate in three. Hint highlights a strong move for you.
Every game is saved automatically in the Archive, in standard chess notation (PGN). Tap a game to replay it move by move on the board.
The computer opponent is Stockfish 18, compiled for the browser by stockfish.js and licensed under the GPL-3.0. Rules by chessops (GPL-3.0). Chess pieces by Colin M.L. Burnett (GPLv2+). Online play by PeerJS (MIT). Games are recorded in Portable Game Notation (PGN).