About Park Legend
Park Legend is a free chess game you play in your browser. You sit down at a stone table in a city park, opposite a man who plays chess for money, and you find out whether you are as good as you think.
The idea
Anyone who has walked through a city park with chess tables has seen him: the regular who has been at the same board since morning, who plays fast, talks the whole game and always seems to be winning a few dollars off somebody. Park chess is quicker and louder than club chess. The clock matters, the talking matters, and a player who looks careless in the first game is sometimes setting you up for the second.
Park Legend puts that table on your screen. The chess is real chess, played under the full rules, against an engine written for this game. Everything around the board is there to make it feel like that afternoon in the park: the pigeons, the light moving from day to dusk to night, the seasons, the cigarette, the coffee, the people standing behind you watching.
What you can do
- Play the hustlers. A ladder of opponents from about 400 to about 2200 rating points, plus two that do not give their number away. Each plays at his own strength, and the card in front of you says which.
- Look around. You play on a clear, flat board laid out like any chess site. One button lifts you out of it and back into the park, mid-game, with the clock still running.
- Change the room. Play in the park at day, dusk or night through four seasons, or take the game down to the basement, a windowless back room with one bulb over the board.
- Play for play money. Signed-in players carry a balance of in-game dollars ($$$) from game to game and can put some of it on each game. It is play money only. It cannot be bought, sold, cashed out or exchanged for anything.
- Get on the leaderboard. Games played while signed in count towards a world leaderboard, this week and all time, ordered by wins, win rate, money, hustle rating and winning streak. The results are checked on the server by replaying every game, so the board shows what was actually played.
Guests and accounts
You can play straight away as a guest, with no sign-up. A guest gets a name like Guest01234 and the whole game, but no balance and no place on the leaderboard, because a record kept in one browser does not belong to anyone. Sign in with Google to keep your record, your money and your rating, and to be ranked.
Free, and paid for by ads
Park Legend is free to play in the browser. It is paid for by a small number of ads on pages like this one. There are no ads on the chess board and nothing interrupts a game. The privacy policy explains what that means for your data.
Who makes it
Park Legend is an independent game made by one small team. Questions, bug reports and ideas are welcome at info@theparklegend.com.