About this plugin
Human2Human Chess Duell provides a complete online chess game for two human players.
There is no AI – only the full chess rules.
Features:
- Human vs human via a shared link (hash in the URL:?chess_game=…)
- Whoever creates the game plays White; the second visitor automatically becomes Black.
Further visitors watch the game as spectators.
- Players can choose their own name. For logged-in WordPress users the display
name is pre-filled (and can be overridden).
- Logged-in WordPress users (any role) may bypass the limit of simultaneous games.
- Full chess rules: castling, en passant, pawn promotion,
check/checkmate/stalemate, fifty-move rule, insufficient material.
- Server-side rule validation: every move is validated on the server
(custom PHP engine). Cheating via a manipulated browser is not possible.
- Configurable in the backend: number of simultaneous games and the lifetime
until automatic end (Settings > Human2Human Chess Duell).
- A game ends only by checkmate, resignation or draw – or expires after the
configured period of inactivity (default 14 days).
- Optional chess clock when creating the game. Only the online time of the
player to move is counted – if someone is offline, their clock pauses (no time
spent overnight). On timeout the player loses.
- Optional e-mail notification when it is your turn (pre-filled for logged-in
users with a stored address). The address is used only for the notification
and automatically deleted when the game ends – not stored permanently
(technically visible in the server log).
- Updates do not interrupt running games (backward-compatible data).
- Synchronization via the WordPress REST API (polling, every 2 seconds).
- No external dependencies (no CDN, no images) – Unicode chess pieces.
- In-game private chat between the two players, a move list, an optional
“show piece names” tooltip helper, and a personal “continue on another
g. move from desktop to phone).
The plugin interface is in English and fully translatable. A complete German
translation (de_DE, incl. de_DE_formal) is bundled with the plugin.