Chess is a classic game of skill between 2 players. In Chess Arena, you can challenge friends and stranger to live games with numerous customization options, including clocked matches and unique piece sets. Play multiplayer games against users from around the world or train with a Grandmaster rated AI.

Chess is a two-player board game, played on a 64-square checkered board, marked with numbers on the ranks (chess lingo for rows) and files (same for columns). Each player uses a 16-piece set of a different color, usually black, red or brown vs. white.

There are 6 kinds of pieces in a set, each with its own unique way of movement. These number as follows: 8 Pawns, 2 Knights, 2 Bishops, 2 Rooks, a Queen and a King.

The goal of the game is to capture your opponent's King by moving your pieces on the board in a manner that would threaten the king's tile (a.k.a. check) and would prevent the opponent in his next move to nullify the threat to block the threat, eliminate the threatening piece or move the King to a safe tile. If all of those three conditions are met (check either blocked, removed or avoided) the king is captured (a.k.a. checkmate) and the game is over.

On some occasions it is not possible to win or lose. For example, if the king and any other piece of his set cannot move in turn and the king is not threatened, then the game is over with "Patt". On such instances the game is stalemate and ends in a "draw". Match points calculation regards a loss as 0, a draw as 0.5 and win as 1 point.

It is largely agreed that in the 6th century Chess was "born" in India. Some contend that it derives from the Chinese game of Xiangqi or a version of it, which exists since the 2nd century BC.

The ancient Indian game of Chaturanga ("four divisions of the military") was played by two players with a set consisting of 4 types of pieces: infantry (Pawns), cavalry (Knights), elephants (Bishops) and chariots (Rooks). At about the same times in Persia the same game was called Shatranj though the rules were modified. Due to the Islamic conquest of Persia, the game spread throughout Europe, gaining as much popularity as it got new names. In Spanish "Shatranj" became Ajedrez; In Greece the name became Zatrikion; Most of Europe, however, just shortened the original name and adapted it into various written and oral pronunciation of the Persian word for 'king' (shāh).

Making a long story short, the game reached most of Western Europe and Russia around the 10th century AD, of whence it developed enthusiast throughout scholars and nobility, all around the known world. The game begun to metamorphose into what we recognize in chess today around the beginning of the 13th century, and another leap brought it very close to modern rules in the end of the 15th century in Italy and Spain. By then pawns gained the ability to move two squares from their opening position as well as the en passant capture. The Queen and Bishops saw their new movement which made the Queen the strongest and almost the most valuable piece in the game, which it would be if not for the King's significance. This had added two more nicknames to the game – "Queen's chess" and "Mad Queen's chess". Finally, in early 19th century the rules of chess were finalized with the stalemate three-fold repetition and the 50 moves stalemate.

In 1851 the game has become a sport as the first modern tourney was held in London, England. The tourney was won by the unknown-till-then German named Adolf Anderssen. The first world championship was secured by Wilhelm Steinitz of Prague in 1886.

In 1914 the title of Grandmaster was officially invented and the honors to bestow it were conferred to the soon-be-murdered Russian Tsar Nicholas II who awarded it in St. Petersburg to the German mathematician and reigning champion Emanuel Lasker, his future successor (in 1921) the Cuban J.R. Capablanca, Russian-French A. Alekhine, The Jewish German doctor S. Tarasch and the U.S. Chess champion Frank J. Marshall.

In 1924, Paris, France, The Fédération Internationale des Échecs or World Chess Federation (FIDE) was founded and continued (as well as secured the power) the tradition of organizing world championships and bestow the Grandmaster title till this very day.