Monday, 8 February 2016

Feeling bored? You can now play chess within Facebook Messenger

Facebook's Messenger is turning out to be a robust communications platform, boasting over 800 million users. Aside from staying connected with your friends and family, the messaging service has a hidden chess game that you can play from within a conversation window. All you need to do to get started is use the following command: @fbchess play.

It looks like the game has been available for at least a month now. The game is text-driven, which means that you're going to have to use algebraic chess notation. Here's a quick guide, as detailed by Facebook:

  • Start game with random colors: @fbchess play
    • Pick the colors: @fbchess play white/black
    • Pick the opponent: @fbchess play white John
  • Make a move: use Standard Algebraic Notation
    • @fbchess e4 or @fbchess Pe4 moves pawn to e4
    • Nbd2 to move knight from b-file to d2
    • B2xc5 to take on c5 with 2nd rank bishop
    • e8=Q to promote pawn to queen
    • 0-0-0 or O-O to castle
  • Claim draw (e.g. 3-fold repetition): @fbchess draw claim
  • Offer a draw in the current position: @fbchess draw offer
  • Offer an undo of the last move: @fbchess undo
  • Resign: @fbchess resign

Interested? Open up the Messenger app on your phone or head on over to messenger.com to get started.

Source: Reddit; Via: Engadget










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