About Chessish

last updated 19 Jan 2021

Chessish is a non-commercial site. It provides a platform for members to play chess against each other in a non-competitive and non time-limited way. Take as much time as you want. This is designed as a way of playing correspondence chess rather than mimicking real time competitive play.

While you're here try my other games, and I'm sure there will be more to follow.

Here's a little of our the history ...

Chessish started life in 2000 and was my first major web development project. I primarily wanted a site where people could play correspondence style chess and also a project to teach myslef object orientated PHP. I also used it as a platform for playing with javascript. I wrote javscript versions of mines, snake and tetris, one of which is still here and working. I later added german whist and nine-mens-morris, both of which are available here. You will also find my online photo gallery here.

The site went into abeyance with the major chess part of the site no longer being kept up to date. In late 2020 I started to rebuild it based on my more recent OO responsive framework and this is the result. Not all of the original features are implemented yet, but it's a work inprogress. I'm not a graphic designer but am experience in analysing and applying usabilty, so functionality and user-friendliness will always come before prettiness.

Some planned enhancements

  • Practice board - for members to play against themselves, with the ability to copy an existing game onto it.
  • Chess problems - which members can copy onto their practice board to play around with.
  • Messaging between members - this was included in the original chessish but needs to be rewritten for the new site.
  • PDF summary of game - you can currently download an image of a game board, but I'd like a full pdf including game state and list of moves.