Effective date and scope
These terms take effect on 27 August 2026. By using chess.plyyard.com for AI play, same-device play, hints, replays, or online rooms, you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, stop using the site. You remain responsible for checking any local requirements that apply to your use of online services.
Eligibility
You must have the legal capacity under the laws that apply to you to agree to these terms. Minors should use the site only with a parent’s or legal guardian’s permission and guidance. A guardian who permits a minor to use the site should help them understand who can see public rooms, display names, and invitation links.
What the service provides
Chess Yard provides a free browser chessboard, rules enforcement, multiple AI levels, hints, undo, replay, and short-lived online rooms. It does not provide official ratings, tournament arbitration, prize games, paid coaching, managed accounts, or permanent cloud game records.
Limited licence to use the site
As long as you comply with these terms, Chess Yard grants you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, and non-transferable licence for personal study, recreational play, and ordinary browsing. This licence does not permit you to sell the service, impersonate an official client, solicit business under the Chess Yard or Ply Yard name, or copy the site’s proprietary interface and writing at scale without permission.
AI and open-source components
Vs-AI levels and hints run Stockfish locally in the browser. Attribution, licence text, and source links are on the About page. Upstream authors are not responsible for how this site runs.
Online rooms and your responsibilities
Room links, host credentials, and seat tokens may allow their holder to enter a room or recover a seat. Share them only with the players you intend to invite. Other visitors may see, join, or watch public rooms; use a private room when you need to limit visibility. Do not put sensitive personal information in a display name.
Display names and content you submit
Only submit names or text that you have the right to use and that are suitable for public display. Do not submit content that impersonates another person, infringes rights, contains hatred, harassment, threats, explicit material, spam, or sensitive personal information. By submitting a display name, you permit Chess Yard to process and display it only as needed to provide rooms, the lobby, and game status. Chess Yard does not acquire ownership of that content.
Prohibited conduct
You must not interfere with the service through automated traffic, denial-of-service activity, malicious messages, bypassing room permissions, unauthorized control of another person’s room, reverse-probing credentials, distributing malware, or similar conduct. You must not impersonate the site, repackage it after removing its branding, or claim that its AI has an official title, rating, or tournament certification. You also must not use the site for gambling, prize settlement, cheating services, unlawful activity, or infringement of another person’s rights. Reasonable search-engine crawling and personal research are not prohibited.
Security and responsible disclosure
Do not test room credentials that do not belong to you, access another player’s seat, or exploit a vulnerability to increase its impact. If you discover a security issue, stop further access and email contact@plyyard.com with the reproduction conditions and likely impact. Do not disclose valid credentials, personal data, or immediately exploitable details publicly.
Game and rules decisions
The rules code on the page handles legal moves, check, checkmate, stalemate, castling, en passant, and promotion. Software, browsers, and network connections can fail. Chess Yard’s decisions do not replace an official tournament arbiter, and an AI recommendation is not guaranteed to be the only or best move.
Not for competition, betting, or professional use
The site’s clock, position decisions, AI analysis, and connection state should not be used for official tournament rulings, betting, prize allocation, commercial ratings, or any other setting that requires auditable results. Save your own copy of any important game record and take responsibility for decisions made in reliance on the site’s output.
Intellectual property and open-source licences
The Ply Yard brand, this site’s interface and writing, and its proprietary code are protected by the applicable rights. Stockfish and stockfish.js are used under the GNU GPL v3; their authors and upstream projects do not endorse Chess Yard. Open-source attribution, source links, and a copy of the licence are provided on the About page. These terms do not restrict rights you already have under the applicable open-source licences.
Third-party sites and services
Chess Yard may link to the Ply Yard portal, Cloudflare, open-source projects, or licence documents. Each third-party operator is responsible for its own content, availability, and data handling. A link is provided for reference and does not mean that Chess Yard controls, warrants, or endorses all of the linked material.
Availability, changes, and termination
The site is provided as available and with its current resources, without a promise of uninterrupted operation, permanent retention, or error-free service. Maintenance, faults, security incidents, abuse prevention, legal requirements, or third-party infrastructure may interrupt it. Features, room time limits, and the interface may change. We may restrict or terminate access that violates these terms or harms other visitors.
Disclaimers and limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Chess Yard disclaims express and implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, uninterrupted operation, and accuracy of results. It is not liable for indirect, incidental, or consequential loss arising from service interruption, lost games, room expiry, incorrect decisions, device failure, or reliance on AI suggestions. This paragraph does not limit liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.
Updates, severability, and reservation of rights
Material changes to these terms will be reflected by an updated effective date on this page. Continued use after a change takes effect constitutes acceptance of the revised terms. If one provision is unenforceable under applicable law, the remaining provisions continue in effect. A failure to enforce a right once is not a permanent waiver, and these terms do not reduce any non-waivable consumer rights you have by law.
Questions and disputes
If you dispute these terms, a rules decision, or the handling of the service, first email contact@plyyard.com with the relevant URL, time, and reproducible details so that we have an opportunity to review the issue. Any dispute remains subject to applicable mandatory law and the consumer-protection rights available to you.
