Terms of use

Using the site

This site is free. You may use it to play the games, read the pages, and share links to either. You do not need to ask permission to link to anything here.

You need an account to play, and a guest account counts. One person, one account. Sharing an account, or keeping several to inflate or protect a rating, is the one thing that breaks the leaderboards for everyone else.

Fair play

• Do not use an engine, a database, or another person to choose your moves in a rated game against a human. Playing the computer is what the computer is for.
• Do not deliberately lose games, or arrange results with an opponent, to move a rating in either direction.
• Do not stall the clock, or leave a game running, to waste an opponent’s evening. If you want to stop, resign.
• Do not use the game chat to abuse, threaten or harass anyone. It is there so two people can say good game.

We can undo ratings, void games and close accounts when any of that happens. We would much rather not.

What belongs to whom

The games are old and belong to everybody. Nothing here claims ownership of chess, xiangqi, janggi, shogi or hnefatafl, and nothing here uses anyone else’s brand name for them.

The written pages — the rules, the histories, the teaching pages — were written for this site and are ours. Quote them, with a link back. Do not republish them wholesale.

What you type is yours, and by typing it into a game you allow us to store it and show it to the people who can see that game, which for a finished game is anyone with the link.

What we do not promise

The site is provided as it is. We do not promise it will be available, that a game in progress will survive a deployment, that a rating is correct, or that a rule is implemented the way your club plays it. Where we know a rule is a judgement call, the rule set’s own page says so.

We are not liable for anything you lose by using the site, which for a free board game site should be a game and an hour at worst. Nothing here limits any right you have that cannot be limited by agreement.

Ending it

You can stop at any time and ask us to delete your account; the privacy page says what deletion does and does not remove. We can close an account that breaks the fair-play rules above, and we will say why.

This site is run from South Africa by Motebo Technologies, and South African law governs these terms.