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Play Chess in Facebook Messenger with this secret command

Instead of wasting time by sending stickers to Facebook friends, challenge him or her to a game of chess.

Jason Cipriani Contributing Writer, ZDNet
Jason Cipriani is based out of beautiful Colorado and has been covering mobile technology news and reviewing the latest gadgets for the last six years. His work can also be found on sister site CNET in the How To section, as well as across several more online publications.
Jason Cipriani

Maybe you've always wanted to learn how to play chess, or simply love playing a game that challenges you to think ahead. No matter the reason, Facebook Messenger makes it simple to play from a computer or smartphone.

Starting a conversation in Facebook Messenger and enter "@fbchess play" to begin a game of chess between yourself and the person you're chatting with.

To move your pieces, you'll need to be familiar with the commands used to reference both the pieces and locations on the board.

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Screenshot by Jason Cipriani/CNET

As Lifehacker pointed out (via BetaNews), entering a command such as "@fbchess Pd3" would move a pawn to the corresponding location.

A cheat sheet of piece names was provided by BetaNews: K is for king, Q for queen, B for bishop, N for knight, R for rook and P is for pawn.

If you get stuck you can always enter "@fbchess help" in the conversation's text field. A list of commands and instructions will then show up.

Sure, this isn't the best-looking or most sophisticated method to keep your self entertained or play chess, but it'll work. Besides, just think how much fun it will be to send a series of Facebook stickers to your opponent as you yell "checkmate" into a computer screen. What a crazy time to be alive.