Chess is a game of skill and patience. A huge challenge in playing it since the dawn of the internet, though, is finding a partner. Deep knowledge of the game is now rare. Casual competition now more commonly takes the form of fantasy football, Fortnite, and Pokemon battles. 

Chess is thousands of years old and will survive the digital revolution, in part by joining it. That's where Chess.com and Square Off come in. If playing chess online with Square Off sounds like something you'd enjoy, visit our Square Off page to find new deals that will help you save on your first order.

Square Off Online Breakdown

The world's largest chess website, Chess.com supports nearly twenty-six million players around the globe, with thousands more joining each day. Members of all ages and skill levels can solve daily puzzles and browse news about the niche, but passionate, world of competitive chess. Exclusive learning tools and training exercises help mere players to become masters, teaching both basic rules and complex strategy concepts. 

The platform's crowning achievement, though, is its ability to facilitate gameplay between any two players in the world, in real time over the internet. Like its flashier competition, game lobbies on Chess.com bring together passionate players looking for a challenge. Stats are kept and leaderboards are promoted on the site's front page— for glory! Game connectivity works on any screen format, bringing unique mobility to a historically sedentary game. 

In these ways, Chess.com has gloriously introduced the classic strategy game to a new, web-enabled, audience. And, it's free to sign up!

As great as the internet is, most enthusiasts would agree that a big part of chess' appeal lies in its simple tactile richness. Enter Square Off and their groundbreaking artisan smart board, the Kingdom Set. The Kingdom Set is unlike anything ever stocked in a toy store. It's a smart-enabled wooden chess set with built in AI thinking capability. 

The Kingdom Set plays against its user, one on one, with informed strategy, on a move-by-move basis. Finely carved pieces float across the surface powered by butter-smooth machinery inside the wooden board, itself divinely stained and constructed. This magical functionality is a historic achievement in gaming.

By pairing any Kingdom Set with a smartphone, via Bluetooth connection, a player has the ability to tie a Chess.com account into the Square Off app environment and challenge a master anywhere in the world, with their opponents moves being portrayed in physical reality on the Kingdom board in front of their eyes. Rivals can also set game dates when they're worlds apart. Instead of meeting at the park, users can meet up online and play a few rounds without leaving home. This arrangement is even more fun with two Kingdom Sets. It's a new-age method of competition, and one to behold if given the opportunity to play, or even watch. 

The app can save Square Off online games for study and includes twenty different difficulty levels to undertake before a player challenges the best of the best. Owners of the Kingdom Set and Grand Kingdom Set can download it from both the Apple and Google app stores. It also pairs with a selection of other chess apps, expanding the competition pool further. The more the merrier!