About KiriChess

KiriChess is ordinary chess on an 8×8 board, with the usual pieces and the usual moves. No new pieces are added. The variant is the clock: it is not only a timer counting down, it is a resource that moves between the two players as the game is played.

Captures, moves, and checks all add or remove time. Three economies, Steal, Burn, and Bounty, change who pays and who collects. The full numbers live on the rules page.

A position that has already occurred changes no clocks, so repeating a check cannot farm time. The third time the same position appears, the game is a draw.

I started playing chess and started watching a lot of content, videos, streams, tournaments. I noticed a few different experienced players say the same thing, that they wished there were more viable variants out there. That's where KiriChess began, I started trying to come up with one myself.

My first attempt was 2v2 on a shared board with custom piece combos. But I couldn't get the math to work, balance kept breaking no matter how I adjusted it, so I dropped it. That's when I started looking at the clock instead of the pieces, and figured I could build a variant around that.

This site is where the variant is played. Rated games use Glicko-2 in the official pools. You can also play a bot, challenge a friend with a link, watch live games, or build an unrated custom ruleset.

Only the official pools are rated. A game against the bot, a challenge sent as a link, and a custom ruleset are unrated, so none of them move a rating. Finished games stay up to replay, and each pool has a leaderboard.

I run KiriChess on my own. It is independent, free, and run at cost by one person. Supporting it never unlocks a feature; patrons get a small badge next to their name. If you want to help with server costs, there is a donate page.

Donations are one-off. The badge is a small heart beside your name. It lapses on its own, and it has no effect on pairing, ratings, or the clocks.

Questions, press, and anything that is not a rules dispute: [email protected]. There is also a Discord.

To report content or conduct on this site, including anything you believe is unlawful, write to the same address. Reports are read by me; there is no automated decision. You will get a reply.

If you are signed in, you can also report a player from the game. That is an extra way in, not a substitute for the email.

The board can be played from the keyboard, moves are announced to a screen reader, and the site respects reduced-motion settings. I have not yet completed a full screen-reader pass of live play, so this is not a WCAG conformance claim.

If you hit a barrier, write to [email protected]. I am one person and I will fix what is reported.

KiriChess by Michiel Gekiere, invented February 2026. This page is the origin record.

To credit the rules: “KiriChess” by Michiel Gekiere, licensed under CC BY 4.0. A fork under another name may say it plays the KiriChess variant, invented by Michiel Gekiere, rules CC BY 4.0, without implying that I endorse it.

A catalogue entry on The Chess Variant Pages is planned; this page is the dated record until then.