Keeping game traditions alive

Every country has the games its people grew up with. We put them online with the rules they are really played by, so you can sit down at a table and play the way you remember.

What PlayElephant is

• Live opponents and partnersYou play with real people. In pair games your partner is a real person too. Robots play only where a game says so, and they are always marked.
• National rulesEach game follows the rules of the country it comes from. The table settings show exactly which variant is being played.
• Robots for practiceNo one to play with right now? Games marked “Robots available” let you practise against a robot. Practice games count too, as practice.

Games

Pick a game to read its rules and see how we play it.

• Backgammon

  👥 2 · Race your checkers home with dice

  Played worldwide

  🤖 Robots available for practice

  Variants: Backgammon-16, Backgammon: nack, Hyper backgammon, Tapa gammon.

  Play now

• Chess

  👥 2 · The classic game of strategy

  Played worldwide

  🤖 Robots available for practice

  Variants: Battle chess, Bullet, Chess blitz, Chess give-away, Chess no castling, Chess sweden, Classic chess, Crazyhouse.

  Play now

• Bridge

  👥 4, pairs 2×2 · Bid, then play tricks in pairs

  Played worldwide

  Only with other players for now

  Variants: Bridge - bidding, Mini-bridge.

  Play now

• Chinese poker

  👥 2 · Build three poker hands row by row

  Played worldwide

  🤖 Robots available for practice

  Variants: Big pineapple, Chinese open poker, Chinese pineapple, Chinese pineapple-7, Chinese turbo, Chinese turbo-pineapple, Chinese turbo-pineapple-7, Taiwanese.

  Play now

• Draughts

  👥 2 · Capture by jumping on the diagonal

  Played worldwide

  🤖 Robots available for practice

  Variants: Checkers, Pool checkers.

  Play now

• Go

  👥 2 · Surround territory with stones

  Played worldwide

  🤖 Robots available for practice

  Play now

• Hearts

  👥 4 · Avoid hearts and the queen of spades

  Played worldwide

  🤖 Robots available for practice

  Play now

• Othello

  👥 2 · Flip discs to own the board

  Played worldwide

  🤖 Robots available for practice

  Variants: Othello inv, Othello-10, Othello-10 inv.

  Play now

Points, ranks and levels

Every game keeps its own record, so you can be a beginner at one game and a master at another.

• Rank. Every finished game moves your rank up or down. Ranks go in steps, and after each game you see your own progress. Each season has its own ranking.
• Level. Experience from every game you finish. It never goes down, and it grows the more you play.
• Fair opponents. A hidden rating, which nobody sees, helps find opponents of your own strength.
• Practice with robots. Practice games give experience and move your rank too, but the higher ranks open only after games against people.
• Seasons. At the end of a season you get a badge for the best rank you reached. The new season starts a step lower, so it is easy to come back. Skip a season and you lose nothing.
• Friendly games. Friendly games give less experience than rated games.

Free for now, a subscription is planned

Everything on PlayElephant is free at the moment, and ads may be shown. We plan one subscription, around €5 a month, that would turn the ads off and give entry to all tournaments and more. This is a plan only: for now everything stays free.