*with EqualChess rules. Asterisks are honest.
The Backstory
Computers started beating humans at chess 30 years ago. I couldn't even beat the tutorial.
Around 1997, Deep Blue famously defeated Kasparov and chess was never quite the same. Machines conquered the game. History was made. Great stuff, very impressive, wonderful for the sport.
Meanwhile, I was somewhere at the bottom of the chess internet, having just joined chess.com, starting at the standard beginner rating of 400 ELO like everyone else. Normal enough beginning.
Quick note on what 400 ELO means: it means you can move the pieces legally, and that's approximately where the praise ends. It is the chess equivalent of being able to hold a paintbrush. The Sistine Chapel remains some distance away.
The thing is, 400 ELO turned out not to be my floor. It was my ceiling. After a dedicated period of playing, studying, losing, studying more, and losing differently, I had successfully brought my rating to 40 ELO.
Forty. Four-zero. A rating so low the site's matchmaking algorithm was confused. I was matched against accounts that appeared to have been created by people testing whether the site worked. I lost to those too.
The Brother Problem
My brother, meanwhile, was doing something entirely different with the same game.
He cracked ELO milestones the way some people crack knuckles — casually, repeatedly, without apparent effort or discomfort. New heights fell regularly. He discussed openings in a language that sounded like chess but felt like a foreign dialect I'd never be fluent in.
We tried to play together. It went about as well as you'd expect. I'd make a move. He'd respond. I'd make another move. He'd respond. He'd be thinking about dinner. I'd be having what I can only describe as a chess emergency, trying to remember if knights can take diagonally.
"The gap between a strong chess player and a weak one isn't a gap. It's a different planet with a different atmosphere. You can see each other across the void. You can't breathe the same air."
— Inventor of EqualChess, 40 ELO, reflecting honestly
There had to be a better way to share the game I genuinely loved watching, even if I couldn't play it properly.
The Invention
One rule change. That's all it took.
The idea came from a simple question: what if the advantage didn't stay in one place? What if the board itself was the great equaliser — not by dumbing the game down, but by turning it around automatically?
Every 4 captures, the players swap sides. White becomes Black. Black becomes White. Over and over until someone delivers checkmate.
What happens in practice is sort of magical. The strong player builds a devastating position — then has to survive it from the other side. The weak player, who was about to be crushed, suddenly inherits the stronger army. The game breathes. It shifts. It becomes something neither player fully controls.
And somehow, inexplicably, I started beating people rated 1800. Not every game. Not even most games. But enough that it stopped being a coincidence and started being something worth sharing with the world.
At very least, it's led to draws against players who would have otherwise checkmated me before I'd finished my biscuit.
(Standard Chess)
(EqualChess)
could beat me
The Mission
Chess is a gift. It shouldn't come with a skills prerequisite.
EqualChess exists for one reason: to make it possible to play chess with the people you love, regardless of where either of you sits on the skill spectrum.
No rating system. No ranking pressure. No crushing your eight-year-old in three moves and calling it a learning experience. Just chess, slightly bent, and all the better for it.
Bring your people. Play the game. May the swaps be ever in your favour.