Budget Chess Budget Chess

Standard chess with one twist: you buy your own pieces, in secret, and then play live against a friend.

♟︎1 ♞︎3 ♝︎3 ♜︎5 ♛︎9 ♚︎FREE 39 TO SPEND
2-20 characters: letters, numbers, spaces, - _ . '  Names are unique.
We'll email you a link to set a new password. It works for about an hour.
The rules
  • Every piece has a price: pawn 1, knight 3, bishop 3, rook 5, queen 9. The king is free and you must have exactly one.
  • You have 39 points to spend and a maximum of 16 pieces, king included. Unspent points are wasted.
  • Put your pieces anywhere on your two home ranks. Pawns are allowed on the back rank.
  • From then on it's normal chess. Any pawn can move two squares on its first move, wherever it started. En passant and promotion work as usual.
  • No castling.
  • Checkmate wins. Stalemate, the same position three times, fifty moves with no capture or pawn move, or too few pieces to force mate is a draw.

Set a new password

You're signed in from the link in your email. Choose a new password and you're done.

At least 6 characters.
2-20 characters: letters, numbers, spaces, - _ . '  Names are unique.
At least 6 characters. You stay signed in on this device.

Players

Ranked by wins. Tap Challenge to start a game with someone without sharing a code - colours are decided by coin flip when they accept.

The rules
  • Every piece has a price: pawn 1, knight 3, bishop 3, rook 5, queen 9. The king is free and you must have exactly one.
  • You have 39 points to spend and a maximum of 16 pieces, king included. Unspent points are wasted.
  • Put your pieces anywhere on your two home ranks. Pawns are allowed on the back rank.
  • From then on it's normal chess. Any pawn can move two squares on its first move, wherever it started. En passant and promotion work as usual.
  • No castling.
  • Checkmate wins. Stalemate, the same position three times, fifty moves with no capture or pawn move, or too few pieces to force mate is a draw.

Invite code

Your army
Spent
0/39
Pieces
1/16
To spend
39
Place your pieces

Tap a piece, then tap a square on your two home ranks. Tap a placed piece to pick it up again. Your opponent can't see this.

Live
Live

Step back and forward through the moves of this game. Tap a move in the list to jump to it; left and right arrow keys work too. » returns you to the latest position - in a live game you can only play from there.

Live
© Euan and Mike Prescott 2026

Promote to

Game over