About r/chess
In its own words:
All about the game of chess, including discussions on professional tournaments, game analysis and theory. If you are new to the game, check out /r/chessbeginners and before posting here please read our rules: https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/wiki/index.
Community guide
r/chess (#594, about 1.9 million subscribers) is oriented around: All about the game of chess, including discussions on professional tournaments, game analysis and theory. If you are new to the game, check out /r/chessbeginners and before posting here please read our rules:… Recent activity samples show 89 posts/day in recent samples (~39% image, ~38% text, ~10% link). Public rules we collected include: Keep the discussion civil and friendly.; Don't engage in discriminatory or bigoted behavior.; Low-Quality submissions are not allowed.; Off-Topic submissions are not allowed.; Do not politicize r/Chess..
What belongs here
Stay inside the room’s stated scope rather than adjacent fandoms or general off-topic dumps.
How it differs from lookalikes
The length of the public rule list is itself a signal: skim all of them once before assuming defaults from similar communities.
Practical pointers
Read the current sidebar/rules on Reddit before posting; collected rules can lag. Common flairs in samples include: Chess Question, Miscellaneous, Puzzle/Tactic, News/Events.
SubMouse Editorial
The community was created on Apr 5, 2008, which makes it 18 years old. Since Oct 26, 2026, it has gained 1,874 subscribers (+0.10%). It sits just behind r/beauty (#593) and ahead of r/AskHR (#595) in our ranking.
What sets r/chess apart
For its size it is unusually busy: about 48.1 new posts a day per million members, more than 87% of the Top 100.
Subscriber growth
Between Sep 19, 2026 and Nov 2, 2026, r/chess went up from 1,846,541 to 1,858,077 subscribers (+11.5K, +0.62%). That is about 262 new members per day. The chart uses our weekly snapshots (9 so far), so it gets longer every week.
What r/chess talks about
We read the titles of 593 recent posts (Oct 29–Nov 5), the words that come up most are “move”, “game”, “play”, “white” and “hikaru”. Other frequent themes are black, elo, opening, brilliant, win and games. Recurring phrases include “hikaru nakamura”, “javokhir sindarov”, “brilliant move” and “fabiano caruana”. By format, 39% are images, 38% are text posts and 10% are links.
Popular post flairs: Chess Question (167), Miscellaneous (125), Puzzle/Tactic (59), News/Events (57), Game Analysis/Study (53), Video Content (33).
Activity and best time to post
r/chess gets about 89 new posts a day. The public archive holds 404,389 posts and 6,367,316 comments in total, about 15.7 comments per post. Last week the busiest day was Monday (125 posts) and the quietest was Saturday (52). Posting peaks around 14:00 UTC and is lowest around 07:00 UTC.
Rules of r/chess
The moderators of r/chess list 10 rules. In short:
- Keep the discussion civil and friendly.
- Don't engage in discriminatory or bigoted behavior.
- Low-Quality submissions are not allowed.
- Off-Topic submissions are not allowed.
- Do not politicize r/Chess.
- Do not use /r/chess primarily to promote your own content.
- Unfounded or non-newsworthy cheating accusations are not allowed.
- Cheating, and facilitating others to cheat, is unacceptable.
- Social media submissions must be accurate and verifiable.
- Match / tournament result submissions require a certain level of quality.
How to join
Open reddit.com/r/chess and press “Join”. Read the community rules in the sidebar before you post: every subreddit is run by its own volunteer moderators.
Frequently asked questions
How many members does r/chess have?
r/chess has 1,858,077 subscribers (Nov 2, 2026), which makes it the #594 safe-for-work subreddit in the SubMouse ranking. It added 11,536 members between Sep 19, 2026 and Nov 2, 2026.
When was r/chess created?
r/chess was created on Apr 5, 2008, so it has been around for 18 years. The oldest post in the public archive is from May 26, 2008.
Is r/chess still active?
Yes. r/chess gets about 89 new posts a day (average of the last four weeks). Over its lifetime the archive counts 404,389 posts and 6,367,316 comments. In a sample of 593 recent posts we counted 463 different authors.
What is the best time to post in r/chess?
Based on post counts from Oct 29, 2026 to Nov 4, 2026, the busiest day was Monday and the quietest Saturday, and most posts arrive around 14:00 UTC, with the fewest around 07:00 UTC. More posts also means more competition, so a quieter hour can help a post get noticed.
What kind of posts are on r/chess?
The community describes itself as: “All about the game of chess, including discussions on professional tournaments, game analysis and theory. If you are new to the game, check out /r/chessbeginners and before posting here please read our rules: https://ww…” Recent post titles often mention move, game, play, white and hikaru. Most posts are images (39%).
Is r/chess SFW?
Yes. Reddit does not mark r/chess as an 18+ (NSFW) community. SubMouse lists safe-for-work subreddits only.
What are the rules of r/chess?
Join the community on Reddit first, then use “Create post”. r/chess accepts both text and link posts, with images, videos, galleries and polls enabled. It has 10 posted rules, starting with: “Keep the discussion civil and friendly.”; “Don't engage in discriminatory or bigoted behavior.”; “Low-Quality submissions are not allowed.”. Moderators remove posts that break the rules, so read them in the sidebar before posting.
What subreddits are similar to r/chess?
Communities with similar topics include r/DestinyTheGame (3.4M), r/gamedev (2.1M), r/compsci (4M), r/olympics (1.7M) and r/boardgames (5.5M).
Stats from public data (data updated Nov 2, 2026; activity, rules and archive totals via the Arctic Shift archive, Nov 6, 2026). Point and comment counts are archive snapshots and can be lower than on Reddit today. SubMouse is an independent directory and is not affiliated with Reddit or the moderators of r/chess.