Big Update Release - Infinite Chess 1.6!

We're excited to announce the release of an update that's been long in progress! The main focuses are a new checkmate practice mode, the ability to drag pieces, and new variants!

Practice Mode

• There's a new Practice menu on the title screen. Play against an engine to practice your checkmating skills against a lone king in lots of endgame configurations! Can you master every single checkmate known?

• Earn radiant badges the more practice checkmates you complete! The highest badge you earn is displayed on your profile page for visitors to see.

Dragging Pieces

• Pieces may now be dragged to move them. This is toggleable in the settings menu. Holding control will force drag the board instead of a piece.

• Drag pieces onto arrow indicators on the edge of the screen to capture the piece the arrow is pointing to, if it is legal!

Variants

• Piece movements and behavior are now highly customizable per variant. This has opened the door for new and exotic variants below. In addition, compatibility has been added for 4 dimensional variants of any size/depth/space!

• New: Confined Classical by tsevasa. A wall of obstacles covers your rear, offering some protection against overpowered flank attacks, without inflating the number of pawns in the game.

• New: Chess on an Infinite Plane - Huygens Option by V. Reinhart. This features a new piece, the Huygen. The Huygen moves in the same direction as rooks, except it is a prime rider, meaning it only skips on squares which are a prime distance from its starting location. This has interesting mathematical implications on the infinite chessboard. Can you master its movement and dominate your opponents?

• New: 4x4x4x4 Chess by tsevasa. In this 4 dimensional variant, all pieces have gained the ability to jump across boards in different dimensions! The queen's movement imitates the princess, and the pawn's movement imitate the brawn, which are both found in 5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel.

• New: 5D Chess by Jace. 64 squares. 64 boards. Chessboard inception! This variant was designed to be a reflection of 5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel. Move interdimensionally across space and time to other worldly boards! The checkmate algorithm is disabled in this one, be careful not to step into check! The game ends when just one of the many kings are captured.

• Deleted: Amazon Chandelier, Containment, Classical - Limit 7, and CoaIP - Limit 7. These were among the least played.

Other additions

• Arrow indicators pointing to pieces off-screen are now animated with the moves. The mini images visible of the pieces when you are zoomed out are also now animated!

• Added compatibility with the Royal Queen, and Rose piece. The Royal Queen is similar to a queen, but it will lose you the game if it is checkmated. The Rose piece behaves like a knightrider that leaps in circles. No variant features these yet (people are welcome to submit variant suggestions!).

• All contributors to the infinitechess.org source code are now listed on the homepage. Thank you all!

• Fixed the auto-aborting for "cheating" that ocurrs when you move a piece a distance of 1e21 or greater in an online game. You can now move as far in online games as you can in local games! Although you will still experience graphical glitches, those will be patched later.

• Added a spinny-pawn animation while each game loads.

• Your coordinates are now editable in local games.

• Several other user experience improvements and bug fixes. Too many to list here!

Tournament announcement!

We are now opening the signups for the second ever Infinite Chess tournament since the creation of infinitechess.org, and the first tournament played on the “Chess on an Infinite Plane” starting position!

The time control will be 10m+6s and the format will consist of an initial group stage and a subsequent elimination stage, with games being played on a flexible schedule at a roughly weekly basis. The winner will be given a special unique role on the community discord server!

Here's the sign-up form. The deadline to sign up is Friday, April 4, 2025 and the tournament will begin on the following day. The full rules are located here. For future updates about the tournament, join the discord!

Themes Update - v1.5 - Released!

• Adjust the color of the board from a wide variety of options inside the new settings dropdown menu!
• Choose whether legal moves are represented by dots or squares!
• On desktop, adjust your perspective-mode mouse sensitivity and field of view!
• The settings dropdown also includes a ping meter, so you can tell how fast your connection is!
• The language selection has been moved from the footer to the settings dropdown.
• Preferences are saved both on the browser, and on the server, so it will remember them wherever you go!
• Completely redesigned the header bar! Added the Infinite Chess logo, vector graphics for each link, the settings gear dropdown. Also, there's no more horizontal scrolling needed on mobile, because the links adapt to the available space!
• The board now retains momentum when you throw it with the mouse or your finger!
• Login sessions are now automatically renewed when you reconnect 1 day after the previous renewal! No more abruptly being logged out when you are in the middle of a game.
• Clocks now match exactly what the server says, subtract half your ping, instead of going off of your system clock, which may or may not be out of sync with the server machine's system clock. This was the cause of a bug displaying incorrect clock values.
• Migrated members' account storage to a SQLite Database system.
• Each member has been given a unique identifier. This cannot be changed, and cannot be reused when the account is deleted. Now, even when players change their name, their id will forever point to the same account. Game notation now includes the id of each player.

The first-ever Infinite Chess tournament is now open for sign-ups!!! It will be played on the Classical variant, and the time control will be 10m+6s (this will be added soon). The winner will be given a special flare and/or role on the community discord!

Here's the sign-up form! The deadline to sign up is Friday, Sept 27th! The full rules are located here. For future updates about the tournament, join the discord!

Update v.1.4.1 has been released!

• Draw offers have been added! Find the offer draw button in the pause menu!
• Added languages for the following: Chinese, Polish, Portuguese!
• Fixed bug where spamming the Create Invite button gave you messages such as you already have an invite, or you can't accept your own invite.

Update 1.4 is released! There have been many collaborative features added since we open sourced!

• Knightriders have been added, which hop infinitely like a knight until they're obstructed! The 'Knighted Chess' variant has been upgraded to replace the knights with knightriders!
• Click your or your opponent's pieces at any time to view their possible moves!
• Right-click at any time to deselect the currently selected piece.
• Hovering over arrow indicators on the edge of the screen now renders the legal moves of the piece they are pointing to!
• The game now automatically declares a draw if there's insufficient material on the board to force checkmate.
• Translated the website into French! You can change the language by visiting the footer on any page.
• Improved the loading time of the website.
• New website icon, Ω! This automatically matches your preferred light or dark device theme.
• The game code's, or the ICN's, metadata has been reformatted to more closely match PGN norms.
• Users can now delete their account on their profile page, if they so choose, without having to email us.

If you have not verified your account, please do so on your profile page! All unverified accounts will soon be deleted!!

The Terms of Service have been updated. Changes made: All games you play on the website may become public information, including the approximate time your account was last active. The terms may be updated at any time, and it is your responsibility to make sure you're up-to-date on them.

Your game history may become available on your profile at a future time.

Infinite Chess is Now Open Source! See, and contribute, to the project on GitHub!

1.3.2: Added showcase variants for Omega^3 and Omega^4 that were shown in my latest video. Also, the checkmate algorithm is now compatible with multiple kings per side.

Update 1.3.1 released! This includes the guide, pop-up tooltips when hovering over the navigation buttons, and links to the discord and game credits on the title page!

Update 1.3 released today! This includes MANY new speed and user experience improvements. Just a few are:

• The transition to websockets, decreasing the delay when your opponent moves.
• No longer getting disconnected when you switch tabs.
• Audible cues when you or someone else creates an invite, or makes a move.
• Added the 50-move rule.
• A drum countdown effect is now played at 10 seconds left on the clock.
• An auto-resignation timer will start if you're opponent goes AFK (with an audible warning).

And many others! For the full list, check out the discord!

New video released today!