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Maybe you’ve always wanted to learn how to play chess, or simply love playing a game that challenges you to think ahead. No matter the reason, Facebook Messenger makes it simple to play from a computer or smartphone.
Starting a conversation in Facebook Messenger and enter “@fbchess play” to begin a game of chess between yourself and the person you’re chatting with.
To move your pieces, you’ll need to be familiar with the commands used to reference both the pieces and locations on the board.
Enlarge ImageScreenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET
As Lifehacker pointed out (via BetaNews), entering a command such as “@fbchess Pd3” would move a pawn to the corresponding location.
A cheat sheet of piece names was provided by BetaNews: K is for king, Q for queen, B for bishop, N for knight, R for rook and P is for pawn.
If you get stuck you can always enter “@fbchess help” in the conversation’s text field. A list of commands and instructions will then show up.
Sure, this isn’t the best-looking or most sophisticated method to keep your self entertained or play chess, but it’ll work. Besides, just think how much fun it will be to send a series of Facebook stickers to your opponent as you yell “checkmate” into a computer screen. What a crazy time to be alive.
