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This secret code will let you play chess on Facebook Messenger

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This secret code will let you play chess on Facebook Messenger

From the amazingly intricate easter egg department: Facebook has a hidden, fully functional, graphical game of chess embedded into its Messenger, and anyone can play.

To start a game, open a Messenger conversation with someone and type “@fbchess play”. A chess board will show up, and your game has just started!

Unfortunately, the board is not drag-and-drop; instead, you need to send text commands to move your pieces across the board, with the board refreshing as a new static image after each move. The commands use Standard Algebraic Notation; in layman’s terms, this means that P is pawn, N is knight, B is bishop, R is rook, Q is queen and K is king. To move a pawn from the starting position, for example, you’d type “@fbchess Pb4”.

The game supports draws (type “@fbchess draw offer” to offer one), undo (type “@fbchess undo”), and you can resign with “@fbchess resign”.

There’s quite a bit more to it; to get the full list of commands, type “@fbchess help” into Messenger.

Facebook chess

Two games of Facebook’s hidden chess started in two Messenger windows.

The feature, which hasn’t been publicly advertised anywhere, has been around for at least a month, when it was spotted on Reddit; the news passed relatively unnoticed until it was picked up by Lifehacker Thursday.