Anichess is a subsidiary of Animoca Brands that is developing an innovative and community-driven chess experience. At the center of this experience is a free-to-play game that combines traditional chess's core values with added strategic layers through innovative spell mechanics. We are driven by innovation, inclusivity, and community empowerment, continuously striving to create a platform that preserves the rich heritage of chess while constantly pushing the boundaries of the game.
The Masters League playoffs kick off this weekend, bringing together Anichess's top-ranked players with 100,000 $CHECK on the line. Every match will be broadcast live on the game's Twitch channel.
The playoffs cap off the ranked season: players earned points in ranked play to enter, and those who advance reach the Masters League itself. The 100,000 $CHECK top prize was the headline of the league when it was announced in late September, and this weekend's matches decide who takes it.
Anichess has added ban and pick to ranked mode, currently in testing. Each player bans 2 spells before a match and neither side can use them — a change aimed at the power-pick meta around spells like Transcendence. The studio is asking for feedback while the feature is in testing.
At the same time, the team pushed live a batch of new puzzles at the Anichess puzzle page.
Mind Games AI's Alpha Season 1 is now live with a $10,000 prize pool and free entry. Players compete by submitting prompts — "may the best prompts win" — kicking off the first competitive season of the AI-agent arena behind minds.games.
Anichess amplified the launch by reposting the announcement on X to its followers.
Anichess's Halloween event is live. The Check or Treat Halloween Adventure takes place on Blunderhollow, a haunted island where players run a route of four stops — Lanternwick Farm, The Dreadtide, Experiment 64 and the Blunderhollow Manor boss — each resident playing chess with a rigged starting position (missing pawns, swapped pieces). Fights are five-minute games with spells on both sides, won via Kingslay; Beginner and Intermediate are open from the start, every difficulty has its own boss, and the ladder ends at Master.
Runs pay out candy and chocolate that carry over between runs and are spent in the Sweet Exchange on 17 avatars and 6 board sets, with The Mummy as the reward for clearing Master. The event runs until 24 November, and the studio has teased a raffle coming.
Anichess issued the final Checkmate Pass reward of 100,000 $CHECK to holders, timed to the sunsetting of Abstract, the chain the project is leaving for Base. Most of the pool went out weighted by Checkmate points, with the remainder to holders who play Anichess or are active in Discord, and every holder receives the Checkmate Pass in-game skin, claimable on login.
The payout is part of a closing wave of distributions as Anichess severs its on-chain ties to Abstract ahead of the chain's shutdown: the announcement confirms 800,000 $CHECK dropped across Checkmate Reign (OG pool payouts) and Checkmate Pass rewards on Base, with the public pool and Streamers League Stage 4 also featured in the final payouts.
Anichess is relocating its OG pool from Abstract to Base, and this time it's opening a crack for the wider community to get in. Players must stake 10,000+ $CHECK in the public pool and keep it there for 14 days to be included when the pool moves — and the deadline has now been extended to Sunday 25 Oct, 00:00 UTC (pushed from the original Tuesday 20 Oct cutoff) to give more players time to qualify.
Anichess's Relic Rush is live again, and this run's prize is the Moca cosmetics set. The event is free to enter: players pick 3 spells, and 20 points wins the full set.
Relic Rush is one of Anichess's recurring no-cost event formats, previously run during the M8 migration to Base, where it paid out the Base cosmetics set. The Moca set continues the game's tie-in with Animoca Brands' Mocaverse ecosystem and Moca ID.
Mind Games AI's minds.games mint is now live on OpenSea, the project's on-chain identity collection for what it calls "the agentic gaming" — available at the mindsdotgames collection. The mint is the identity layer for minds.games, an AI-agent arena where players build, equip and send AI Minds to compete for $100,000 across 10 seasons.
Anichess amplified the launch by reposting the announcement on X, pointing followers to the collection.
Round 2 of the Gambit Series opened in Anichess on Saturday, giving players six days to compete on the same terms as Round 1: 100 $CHECK entry per match, 100 points per match, +100 points for a 3-win streak, and 10,000 $CHECK for the round's leaderboard winner. With Round 2 now underway, only two rounds remain to claim one of the two seats that skip the Seasonal Playoffs queue, awarded to the two best players across all four rounds.
The round caps a four-day event run in which only one day costs anything: Thursday's Spellstorm is free with random spells, Playoff Points and 2,000 $CHECK; Friday's Relic Rush is free and plays for the Base cosmetics set; Saturday opens Gambit Round 2; and Sunday's Streamers League Stage 2 airs live on Twitch at 17:00 UTC. Events start at 21:00 HKT / 13:00 UTC.
Anichess has confirmed the M8 migration to Base is done — "we moved to Base, and now the pieces have too," the game says, with cosmetics among the first things to land on the new chain. On migration, every M8 balance is divided by 100, and balances left below 5 are topped up to 5 so players don't arrive on Base with negligible holdings.
Anichess launched its $CHECK token (fixed supply of 1 billion) as the core 'Strategy Token' of the Checkmate Ecosystem, going live on the Base blockchain; the following day Anichess announced it was integrating CHECK as its native token.
Anichess launched its first official NFT collection, Genesis Ethernals, a free mint of 960 NFTs (only Ethereum gas fees required) dedicated to loyal players and early contributors.
Anichess launched the public alpha version of its game, introducing player-versus-player (PvP) matches, AI training modes, and new game modes such as ranked, quick, friend, and bot match.
Anichess announced the completion of a US$1.8 million funding round led by Sfermion and Amber Group, with participation from Fenbushi Capital, Aspen Digital, SNZ Capital, and others, to continue developing the game.
Animoca Brands launched the first phase of Anichess, a free-to-play chess strategy game developed in partnership with Chess.com and Magnus Carlsen, offering free single-player spell-chess puzzles at anichess.com; player-versus-player was planned for Q1 2024.
Anichess, a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, announced the completion of an oversubscribed seed round that raised US$1.5 million from GameFi Ventures, The Operating Group, Koda Capital, Bing Ventures, 708 Capital, Asymmetry Capital, and others.
Animoca Brands and its subsidiary Lympo announced the development of Anichess in partnership with Play Magnus Group, describing a blockchain-based chess game with a play-and-earn ecosystem that was planned to launch in 2023.
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