♚ The World's First Rigorous 2v2 Chess Game

Chess Reimagined
for Teams, now also in
3D Play Mode

Two teams. Four players. One 16×8 board. Full chess rules. A whole new dimension of strategy that demands coordination, communication, and a fundamentally different way of thinking about chess.

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🔥

Think You Can Beat Stockfish-Team-Chess — Alone?

In single-player mode you command both allied armies against a custom-modified Stockfish-team-chess engine built for team chess. With 128-bit bitboards, team-aware evaluation, and a custom NNUE network, this is no ordinary chess AI.

Levels 1–5 will teach you the ropes. From Level 6 upwards, few have won. Can you be the first to conquer Level 9?

Strategy Meets Collaboration

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True Team Play

Two players form the White Team and two form the Black Team, taking turns in a fixed rotation: W1, B1, W2, B2. Your brilliant sacrifice only works if your teammate sees the follow-up.

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Full Chess Rules

Castling, en passant, promotion, the 50-move rule, threefold repetition, stalemate — every rule of standard chess applies on the 16×8 board. If you know chess, you know Team Chess.

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9 AI Difficulty Levels

From Beginner to Maximum, powered by a custom-modified Stockfish engine with 128-bit bitboards. Play solo with three bots, with a teammate against bots, or any combination.

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300+ Original Puzzles

Mate-in-1, Mate-in-2, and Mate-in-3 puzzles generated from AI self-play. Tactical patterns that are genuinely novel — impossible on a standard board.

Instant Play

No account required. No download needed on web. Just join a game and play. Available on web, iOS, and Android — the same experience everywhere.

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Customisable Time Controls

From fast 5-minute blitz to strategic 60-minute games. Real-time multiplayer with Socket.IO ensures smooth, lag-free play with friends or strangers.

Why Team Chess Exists

Chess has been played one-on-one for over a thousand years. Its purity is part of its appeal — but it also limits what the game can express. In a world where collaboration drives every meaningful endeavour, chess has remained stubbornly solitary.

Team Chess changes that. By placing two allied kings on an extended board, it introduces cooperative strategy that traditional chess simply cannot offer. You must think not only about your own pieces, but about how your teammate's position complements your own. You must read their intentions, anticipate their moves, and create opportunities for each other.

The result is a game that feels familiar to any chess player but offers strategic depth that is genuinely new. It is chess, but social. Chess, but collaborative. Chess, but for teams.

What Makes Team Chess Different

🏁 Standard Rectangular Board

The 16×8 board is a clean, logical extension of the standard 8×8 board. No unusual shapes, no piece drops, no rule exceptions.

✅ Full Rule Fidelity

Every rule of standard chess applies. Castling, en passant, promotion, stalemate, the 50-move rule, and threefold repetition all work as expected.

🤖 AI at Every Level

Nine difficulty levels let you practise, learn, and challenge yourself. AI players can fill any of the four seats in any combination.

🚀 No Account Required

Start playing immediately as a guest. No sign-up friction, no barriers. Just join a game and play.

🌍 Cross-Platform

Web, iOS, and Android. The same game, the same rules, the same experience — wherever you are.

🏆 Victory by Checkmate

Checkmate any opposing king to win. Each player protects only their own king, but any team member can check any opponent — creating dynamic attack and defence.

♟ Puzzles & Tactical Training

Over 300 original puzzles — Mate-in-1, Mate-in-2, and Mate-in-3 — generated from AI self-play on the 16×8 board. The presence of four sets of pieces, two allied kings, and an extended board creates tactical patterns unlike anything in traditional chess.

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Built for Performance

Team Chess features a custom-modified version of Stockfish — the world's strongest open-source chess engine. Our adaptation uses 128-bit bitboards for the 128-square board, implements a four-seat turn system, per-seat pin detection for team-checkmate logic, and runs a custom NNUE evaluation network tuned specifically for team chess. The engine is fully open-source under GPLv3.

Backend: Node.js + Express
Real-time: Socket.IO
Mobile: React Native / Expo
AI: Modified Stockfish
Database: SQLite
Deployment: Docker + Caddy
Security: Helmet, bcrypt, rate limiting
Board: 128-bit bitboards

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Welcome Back

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What if the deepest strategy game ever created also required you to work with someone else?

Chess has survived for centuries because it is deep, beautiful, and endlessly challenging. Team Chess does not replace traditional chess — it extends it. A game where defending your king sometimes means trusting your partner to handle the other flank. A game where victory belongs to a team, not just an individual.

Whether you are here to play, to build, to learn, or simply to watch something new emerge from one of humanity's oldest games — welcome.