Rules, terms and privacy

Fair play

Play your own moves. Using a chess engine, another person, or any outside help during an online game is cheating. So is losing on purpose to boost another account, or running several accounts. Cheating accounts are closed, and their games may be removed.

Be decent in your username and towards other players.

How games work

Every move is checked by our server. Each player has one minute to make their first move or the game is aborted. After that the clocks run, and running out of time loses the game, unless your opponent has no way left to checkmate, in which case it's a draw. Leaving a game doesn't stop your clock.

What we store

Your username, a scrambled (hashed) copy of your password, your two-factor settings if you turn them on, and your games. To stop spam and password guessing we keep a one-way scrambled version of your IP address for a short time, never the address itself. Games against the computer stay in your own browser and are never sent to us.

No ads, no trackers, no selling data. Your games and profile are public, like on any chess site.

The service

pawn.rocks is free and provided as it is. We may change features, reset test data while the site is new, or close accounts that break these rules.