Did you know you can play chess in Facebook Messenger?

Did you know that there is a chess game built into Facebook Messenger that you can use to play against your friends? I sure didn’t, but it seems that anyone can have a go by typing “@fbchess play” (without the quotations) into a message to initiate a game with your buddy.

Instead, players have to type in commands to move the pieces around and a picture is updated with the latest piece positions. For example, “@fbchess e4” or “@fbchess Pe4” will move a pawn onto space e4, and there are a selection of other commands for moves like castling or promoting a pawn. For a full list of commands, simply type in “@fbchess help”.

It might not be super slick in its implementation, but this is not a bad way to play a game against your buddies across different platforms, as it works on iOS and PC too. Who’s up for a game?