Skip to content
TrickyBird

Game site

Unblock Chess.com and play a live game in your browser

Chess.com will not open on the network you are on. Paste chess.com into TrickyBird, press Launch, and the home page opens in the tab you already have, the same page a direct visit shows you. Your browser does not connect to chess.com: its requests go to one of TrickyBird’s own addresses, the game connection included, and that address carries the Chess.com address inside it, encoded rather than spelled out.

The usual advice is to install a VPN app, and installing is the step a managed laptop, a shared library computer or an office machine tends to refuse. TrickyBird is a web proxy. It is a page, so it opens with the same permission as any other page, and Chess.com runs inside it.

Guest games on Chess.com are unrated, whichever way you reach the site.

What to expect from Chess.com

On a computer, we played a guest game on Chess.com against a real opponent, signed in to an existing account, solved a rated puzzle, had the engine evaluate a move on the analysis board, and followed a live FIDE blitz event as its moves arrived.

Is chess.com blocked on your network?

The check asks chess.com for one small file directly from your connection, not through TrickyBird, so your network can see that request like any direct visit.

One of our addresses, with the site’s encoded into it

The site loads in the tab you are already in, and this address will not always look the same, since sometimes it is only numbers.

Can you play a live game on Chess.com through TrickyBird?

Yes, and you can do it as a guest. Open Play Online, choose “Play as a Guest”, and Chess.com creates a guest player for you and looks for an opponent. Ours was a real person. We opened with 1. e4, the reply 1...e5 came back onto the board, and both clocks ran.

A game of chess online keeps going after the page has loaded: Chess.com holds a connection open for the whole game, and your moves and your opponent’s travel over it in both directions. TrickyBird fetches the page, rewrites the addresses inside it before your browser sees it, and carries that game connection through its own address as well, so the move you make on the board reaches Chess.com and the reply reaches you.

Can you sign in to your own Chess.com account?

Yes, in our own test. We signed in with an existing Chess.com account, and the account’s own home page opened.

Once you sign in, Chess.com knows which account is playing, as it would in any browser, and while your session is open TrickyBird holds Chess.com’s cookies in a server‑side store keyed to your session, cleared about an hour after the last cookie written into it. The full picture is on our privacy page. TrickyBird changes the route your requests take, not who you are to Chess.com, and it is for reaching your own account, never one that is not yours.

Puzzles, lessons and the analysis board

A rated puzzle came up on the board and we solved it. The Daily Puzzle page opens with its board. Play against the computer loads the board and the bot you play against. On the analysis board, we played a move and the engine evaluated the new position. The lessons and the Learn board open as well.

Live events and the rest of the site

During an ongoing FIDE blitz event, the moves and the clocks arrived in the page as they happened.

News articles, forum threads, clubs, member profiles, the member search, the leaderboards, the openings pages and replays of master and live games all open as they do on a direct visit.

What your network sees

Your network sees the connection to TrickyBird, not the site on the far side. The address bar shows one of our own addresses instead of the site’s. It won’t always look the same; sometimes it is just numbers. A bookmark or a copied link from that tab points at us, not at the page.

Questions

Can I play Chess.com without installing anything?

Yes. TrickyBird runs in the tab you already have open, so nothing downloads and no administrator prompt appears, which is where a VPN app stops on a computer someone else manages. A guest game needs no Chess.com account, and TrickyBird has no account of its own to create. You open the page, paste chess.com and press Launch.

Will I play a real person or a bot?

Either one. The guest game we played from the Play Online screen was against a real person, and if you would rather face the computer, Play against the computer loads the board and a bot opponent in the same tab. Both are Chess.com’s own modes, and TrickyBird does not choose your opponent.

Why is Chess.com blocked on my network?

Usually because of its category rather than anything about Chess.com. A filter on a school or office network sorts sites into groups and closes games as a whole, and that is how a site nobody objected to disappears. The same rule tends to close Poki and CrazyGames, which open through TrickyBird the same way.

Does Chess.com see my IP address?

Chess.com sees TrickyBird connecting, not your device, game connection included. TrickyBird does not handle WebRTC. If a page uses it, that traffic runs outside the proxy and can give the page your real IP address. The edge keeps a short access log: a shortened form of your IP address, the hostname of the site you connected to, and basic response details, kept for at most 48 hours.

Is it legal to use TrickyBird for Chess.com?

This is general information rather than legal advice. Reaching a public site is more often a question of the rules you are under, your network’s or your employer’s, than of the law, and those rules differ from one place to the next. Read the policy that applies to you before you play.

Other sites people unblock

Open Chess.com now

Press the button and the site opens in this tab. You do not need to install anything or create an account.