What is StupidChess?

StupidChess is chess with a deck of cards beside the board. The pieces move the way they always have. The king is still the king, a pawn still promotes, and checkmate still ends the game. But on your turn you can also play one card, and a card can do anything the rules of chess never allowed: freeze a knight in place, slide the whole board one square to the left, bring back a bishop you lost ten moves ago, or set a trap on an empty square and wait. This article is the short tour: what the cards change, what they don't, how a game runs from the first hand to the last move, and where to begin if you've never played.

Chess first, cards second

The board is the one you know. Eight ranks, eight files, sixteen pieces a side, White moves first. Castling, en passant and promotion are all in the game. If you know how a rook moves, you already know most of what you need, and if you don't, the chess basics article covers it in the order you'll meet it.

What the cards add is a second layer on top of all that. Every turn you must make at least one board move. A card on its own is never a turn. Then, before or after the move, you may play one card from your hand, pay its cost, and watch the board change. Then you end your turn and your opponent's clock starts.

That order matters more than it sounds. Because the move is compulsory and the card is optional, a card is never a substitute for playing good chess. It's a way of bending the position you were already going to fight over. A player who ignores the pieces and waits for a perfect card loses to a player who develops, castles and keeps their king safe, then plays a card when it turns a good position into a won one.

What a card can do

Every card says exactly what it does on its face, so you never have to memorize the catalog. The effects fall into a handful of families, and the game groups each card under one or two of six roles: attack, defense, trap, modification, vision and regain. A few examples from each, to give a sense of the range:

• Freeze stops an enemy piece moving until a Thaw card frees it. Assassinate kills a pawn, knight or bishop outright, no capture needed.
• Shield makes one of your pieces uncapturable until after your next turn. Plate Armor keeps it safe until an opponent breaks the armor with a weapon card.
• Spike Pit lays a face-down trap on an empty square. The first enemy piece to step on it is destroyed. Wall puts a block on the board that nothing can move onto or slide through.
• Knight Like lets any piece move like a knight for a turn. Rotate 90° Right turns the whole board a quarter turn, pieces and all. Double Time gives you two extra moves this turn.
• Revert Last Move undoes the last move either player made. Reconnaissance shows you your opponent's hand for the rest of your turn.
• Instant Resurrection puts your most recently captured piece back where it stood. Braincell banks one Braincell, the currency every other card is paid with.

Some cards leave marks on the board that outlast the card: a frozen piece shows its ice, a shielded one its shield, a burning one its fire. Learning to read those marks is most of what separates a new player from one who has played twenty games.

The mode you'll play: Built Deck

The way to play right now is Built Deck. You bring a deck of exactly 52 cards that you built yourself, or one of the five starter decks the game gives every new account. You start with a hand of seven. At the start of each of your turns, one card is dealt from your pile while you hold fewer than seven, and you must end your turn holding seven or fewer.

Cards cost Braincells. Playing a Braincell card banks one; the number on every other card is what it costs. Costs run from one to five, with most of the catalog at two or three. Spare Braincells also buy time: one Braincell adds thirty seconds to your own clock.

Because the deck is yours, the game is as much about what you brought as what you draw. A deck built around traps and walls plays nothing like one built around resurrection, and Built Deck, explained walks through every part of it, from the opening hand to the discard pile.

There is a second mode, Core Deck, in which both players draw from one shared pile and nothing costs anything. It's being reworked at the moment, so you won't find it on the Play page for now.

How a game runs

A game starts with the opening hand. Don't like your seven? Shuffle them back and draw seven more, as often as you like. The price is that for each redraw you put one card from the hand you finally keep on the bottom of your pile. Then White moves.

Each turn looks the same from either side. A card is dealt if your hand has room. You make a board move, play a card if you want one and can pay for it, and end the turn. If you have more cards than seven, you discard down first. Some cards add extra moves to the turn, and a few, marked as Instants, can be played during your opponent's turn instead of your own.

Against a person online, each side has ten minutes for the whole game. Against a robot you can turn the clock off entirely. The game ends by checkmate, by a clock running out, by resignation, or by a draw: stalemate, or one you both agree to. A handful of cards add their own ways to lose. Mill makes your opponent lose if they ever end a turn with an empty draw pile, and a king that steps on a Landmine loses on the spot.

One rule has no equivalent in chess. If you're checkmated but still hold a card that could change the board, you get one more turn, your last stand, to find a way out. Still mated after it, you lose. It means a game is never quite over while there's a card in your hand.

Who you play

The robots are the easiest place to start. There are fifty-six of them, each a pairing of a difficulty from Beginner to Grandmaster and a personality that shapes how it plays. The first eight are free, and the house robot, StupidFish, plays a decent move and then deliberately picks a worse one. The robot always takes Black, so you'll play White.

Against people, Quick Match pairs you with someone of similar rating, or you can share a room code with a friend. A game against a person on a digital board is rated by default, and your rating moves with each result on a Glicko-2 ladder. Guests can play too, though their games don't count for ratings.

Around the games there's the rest of a chess site: a profile with your record and achievements, friends, clubs, a leaderboard of the top fifty rated players, and ranked seasons that run by calendar quarter once they begin.

Where to start

If you've never played chess, the interactive tutorial teaches both halves of the game on a real board in ten short lessons, and you don't need an account for it. If you have, skip to a game against StupidFish with the starter deck the game hands you. Expect to lose a few. The cards punish a new player in ways that don't look like chess mistakes: a knight frozen at the wrong moment, a bishop walked onto a trap, a rook rotated off the square it was defending.

After a few games, open the deck editor and look at what you were playing. Swap in a card you wish you'd had. That's the whole loop, and building your first deck picks it up from there.