← Guide

Game ▸ New Online Game… plays a game against a person on lichess.org or on the Free Internet Chess Server, freechess.org. Lichess is connected through its own sign-in page in your browser; freechess.org asks in Pragma Chess for a registered player's name and password, or lets you play as a guest — unrated games under a name the server gives at every session. A game on freechess.org lives as long as the session: closed during it, Pragma Chess cannot follow it again.

The window lists the platforms you are connected to, each with the account you play as. Connect Platform… asks which kind of platform, opens its own sign-in page in your browser and brings the connection here; Disconnect removes one. Connections are yours on this computer, kept with your settings, never in a project. Choose the connection, the clock (minutes and increment), the colour and whether the game is rated, then Find an Opponent.

While Pragma Chess looks for an opponent and while you play, it is online play mode, checked in Engine ▸ Online Play Mode (greyed out otherwise: playing starts from Game ▸ New Online Game…; choosing it while on stops): the engine, Explain and Training Mode are off and cannot be turned on, and the Opening Tree stays where you put it but lists no moves, its first row saying why — it is you against your opponent. The Engine panel shows the two clocks, as a tournament's digital clock: each its king for its colour and the time in large figures on a dark display, red under twenty seconds and with tenths under ten; on the left the colour at the top of the board (turn the board, and they change places), the running one ringed. Under them, Offer Draw and Resign (which asks first): when your opponent offers a draw the first becomes Accept Draw, and while your own offer waits it reads Draw Offered; playing a move declines an offer. Both go when the game ends. Under the buttons, whose move it is. Your moves go to the platform as you make them; your opponent's slide onto the board. Only the live position can be played: you may look back at earlier moves, and come back to the end to move. If Pragma Chess is closed during a game, it reconnects to it at the next start and the game goes on where it is (the clock kept running on the platform); a game that ended meanwhile is saved with its result. You can switch database while you play: the game stays on the board and, when it ends, is saved to the database open then.

Tick Remember for this session and the toolbar's New Online Game button looks for an opponent with the same choices without asking; the menu always asks.

lichess.org lets apps such as Pragma Chess play rapid and slower games only — at least 8 minutes, counting 40 moves of increment, such as 10+0 or 10+5 —: a faster clock is marked Too fast for lichess.org and cannot be asked for; freechess.org plays any clock.

Game ▸ New Online Game… during a game starts a new online game, Game ▸ New Game asks whether you want a new online game (as New Online Game in the toolbar) or a new game to analyse — with Remember for this session it does not ask again until Pragma Chess is closed —, and Game ▸ New Training… a game against the engine; each asks first whether to keep playing the current game or resign it (while still looking for an opponent, the search just stops). Choosing Engine ▸ Online Play Mode while it is on stops the search, or resigns the game after asking. When the game ends — checkmate, resignation, time, draw — the result is written and the game is saved in the open database, with the players, their ratings and a link to the game. If the connection is lost in the middle of an online game on lichess.org, or Pragma Chess is closed and opened again, it reconnects to the game by itself and you go on where it stands — a few seconds apart, as long as lichess has the game.

While you play, the score and the course are hidden: they say nothing until the game is over. Then Pragma Chess evaluates the game you have just played, move by move, with the engine, for half a minute — Calculating… beside the eye says how far it is: the course beside the Engine panel's score fills in at once, then grows more precise as deeper searches come in. When every move is evaluated, the score's box — while the engine is not analysing — shows the strength each side showed in this game, an estimated Elo after the dot of its colour, in the order of the board: it comes from how much each move lost against the engine's evaluation (hover it for the average loss and the accuracy). From one game it is rough, and a short game stays near an average player's. Choosing another engine evaluates the game again with it, from the start.

Game ▸ Enter the Lobby… opens the lobby of tournaments without a clock, played with other Pragma Chess users over a peer-to-peer network: there is no server of ours, every computer keeps a copy of the lobby and checks every move, and public relays keep the moves for whoever is away. Each room is a tournament of four players, where everyone plays everyone twice, once with each colour; it starts as soon as two players sit, and the lobby always keeps at least two rooms with a free seat, offering a New Room when there are fewer. Each room is named after a chess theme and a champion, such as Capablanca's Fortress; the full ones are listed after the others, and their games can be followed. Enter Room shows its standings — place, wins, draws, losses and points, a win 1 and a draw ½, then the free seats —, its games and, on a small board, the position of the game you select. Take a Seat sits you at a free seat: your games with everyone there appear in bold, and the rooms where you sit come first in the lobby. You play in at most two tournaments at once: a third seat waits until one of yours is over — every seat taken and every game finished —, and the room says so. Whoever comes first in a tournament wins a medal, a yellow dot after their name wherever the lobby shows it, for good: players level in first place each get one, and the tooltip says how many tournaments a player won. A room with games waiting for your move has Play Now in the Your Move column: with one game it takes you straight there, with several it asks which, by opponent and colour. In a room, the games waiting for your move are at the top of the list, then your other games, then the rest. Play Your Move brings the game to the board, seen from your side and at the move to play, with the room as its event; if the game on the board is not saved anywhere you are asked first whether to save it, let it go or stay where you are, and the lobby steps aside (Game ▸ Enter the Lobby… brings it back as it was). The game is then in Lobby Mode, checked in Engine ▸ Lobby Mode: nothing is turned off — correspondence play welcomes the engine and preparation — and the Engine panel says where the game stands, with two buttons. Send Move sends the move after where the game stands. Send Plan sends it together with the answers you prepared: play on, moving your opponent's pieces too, and put their other possible replies in as variations, each followed by your answer; whenever your opponent plays one of them, your answer is played at once. Your opponent may have prepared answers too: after sending you see the moves both plans played, until it is someone's turn to think. A plan has one answer for each position, the line's; another move of yours in a variation is left out, and the panel says so. Closing Pragma Chess keeps everything: it opens again on the lobby game, in Lobby Mode, at the move you were looking at, with the plan you were preparing. Your plan is never sent to your opponent: your computer keeps it and plays it when their move arrives, so it answers only while Pragma Chess is open on one of your computers. Pragma Chess does not disturb you while it is open: no message tells you that someone moved. The lobby window is the one place that does, while it is open: it follows the lobby live, and a game that has just turned to your move glows for a moment, with its room in the list. The bottom of the lobby, and the status bar while the lobby is on, say how you are connected — how many relays and other players' computers —, or that you are not: what you send then leaves as soon as you are. In the lobby you are a key, which signs your moves: it is in Options ▸ Personal Settings…, and for security it is not synced, so to play as yourself from another computer copy it there by hand.