Step 01
Pick Your Club
Your club defines your board, your style, and your place in the competition. Bitcoinia and Etheryst lead the launch, with more clubs to follow.
Competitive online chess with a layer of collectible Battle Cards. Full rules preserved, themed clubs, real progression tied to your account. Pick your club. Play to win.
The same rules you already know — with a layer of Battle Cards that reward skill instead of replacing it.
Your club defines your board, your style, and your place in the competition. Bitcoinia and Etheryst lead the launch, with more clubs to follow.
Before each match, equip a small set of Battle Cards to your pieces — each tied to a piece type. Declare it. Play it. Watch it land.
Standard rules, legal moves only. Cards swing a minority of evenly-matched games. The better chess player wins — always.
Wins build your rating, unlock new tiers, and grow your collection. Every win counts; every loss teaches.
Leaping Strike, armed and fired — one capture, one counter blocked, one knight left standing.
Two clubs lead the launch — each with its own board, identity, and community. More arrive over time.
Free to play, with an optional one-time founding-member purchase. No gimmicks, no surprises.
Yes — standard rules, real rating, the game you already know. The Battle Cards are an optional layer on top: play with them on, or play straight chess anytime. Skill is always what decides the game.
Every mechanic is documented in plain English at docs.chessvs.club — how battles resolve, every card, the Tension Gauge, tournaments, and how rating works. If it's in the game, it's in the docs.
No — think Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken: all are fighting games, but nobody calls one a clone of the other. Traditional chess platforms, like Chess.com and Lichess, and even variants like Anichess that made the jump to mainstream, are great in their own right and we love them. ChessVS is real chess with its own layer on top — a strategic Battle Card system, clubs to fight for, and content that's yours to keep. Same genre, different game.
Never. Chess skill decides who wins — every card that affects a game is earnable through play, and the top tiers are reached by rating, not by paying. We track and enforce it every season.
No. Everything you earn is in-game: cards, rank badges, a permanent record on your board, and FOCUS, the in-game currency you earn by playing and cannot buy. There is no cash prize and nothing to cash out. Prized tournaments are on the roadmap, and we only announce a prize pool once it is funded, so we will not quote numbers we cannot stand behind yet.
Free to play. All you need is an email and a browser — no download, no subscription. The only optional step is a one-time founding-member registration. No gimmicks, no surprises.
The two clubs leading the launch — rival teams you can join and compete for. Pick a side and it becomes your identity in the game. More clubs follow.
A one-time step to reserve your username, claim your digital starter content, and lock in founding status. Optional and one-time — the earliest players in get permanent recognition that never comes around again.
A small, independent team that ships fast and builds in the open with its players. Chess players first — every decision starts with the person who shows up wanting a great game of chess.
We're keeping the alpha small on purpose: about 500 testers for now, though that number may grow over time. Every alpha tester gets:
Everything in the alpha is free. And from me, thank you. You're playing something nobody has played before, and every bug you find and every idea you send makes it better for everyone who comes after you.
Secure your username and join the founding roster as an alpha tester — the first players in get permanent recognition.
Become a Tester →