Are games against a friend rated?

Yes, when both of you are signed in, and on the same ladder as every other game here. The exception is a guest, and it is worth knowing which side of that you are on before you send a link.

Want to just play one? Make a challenge link — pick a time control, send the link, and whoever opens it can play without signing up. This page is about what happens to your rating afterwards.

When it is rated, and when it is not

A game where both of you are signed in moves the same Glicko-2 rating a queued game does, on the same ladder, and it appears on the leaderboard. That is deliberate: a rating you could only earn from strangers would be a rating that punished you for playing the people you know. It also means you cannot farm one — beating somebody 200 points below you is worth +10 points, and losing to them costs -16.

A game also has to actually start. Nothing is rated until both of you have moved, so a link that gets opened and then abandoned costs nobody anything.

How the rating works goes through that arithmetic properly, including why a new account moves in big steps and a settled one does not.

Does your friend need an account? No.

They open the link and play. No sign-up, no email, no download, no waiting for a confirmation. That is the whole point of sending a link rather than a friend request: the person you are inviting has not agreed to join a chess site, they have agreed to play you one game.

You do need one to create the link, because a challenge has to have an author with a rating attached to it. It is free and it is the only account involved.

The trade is honest and worth knowing before you send it: a game where one side is playing as a guest is unrated. There is nowhere to put a rating for somebody who does not have an account, and inventing one would make the ladder measure browsers rather than players. Both sides signed in means the game counts for both.

If your friend decides mid-game that they want the result after all, they can sign in without losing the position. The account takes over their side of the board and the game becomes rated.

What this is not

Who you play. When you use the queue — the “find me an opponent” button — you are matched with a computer opponent at your level. They carry a username, a country and a rating that moves on their results, and the rating is the honest part: it is not a label somebody typed, it is a number their wins and losses have pushed around. What the queue is not is a room of strangers waiting to play. If you want a game against a specific person, that is what a challenge link is for, and it is a real game between the two of you.

Why a link and not a friend request

Most chess sites make you do this the long way round: your friend signs up, you search for their username, you send a friend request, they accept it, and only then can you challenge them. Every step is a place where one of you gives up, and it is why the busiest question in the support forums of every large chess site is some version of how do I invite somebody who is not on here yet.

A link skips all of it. You do not need to know their username, because you are not looking them up — you are handing them the game. That also means it works for the person you play once a year, which a friends list is bad at.

How it works

1. Pick a time control. Anything from 1+0 to 30+20. This is the one decision worth thinking about, because it decides whether the game takes four minutes or an hour — see what the numbers mean.
2. Get the link. The app makes one. It is one game, for one person, and it belongs to nobody until somebody opens it.
3. Send it. Message, email, group chat, anywhere you can paste a URL. There is nothing to install at either end.
4. They open it and accept. The board opens for both of you with the clock already set the way you chose.

The link is good for 60 minutes from the moment you make it, which is long enough to send it and short enough that a challenge you forgot about is not sitting open a week later.

What the link carries

Everything the game needs and nothing about you. The time control, and a code for one game. It is not a key to an account, which is why it is safe to paste into a group chat, and it is spent once somebody has accepted it. Colours are drawn when the game opens rather than written into the link, so neither of you can pick white by making the invitation.

Related

• How to send a chess game linkThe mechanics, and how the same thing works elsewhere
• Chess time controls explainedWhat 5+3 means, and how long a game actually takes
• How chess ratings workGlicko-2, rating deviation and why the numbers move as they do