How Anichess Works: Kingslay, Spells, and Season 9's Daily Circuit

Anichess bills itself as "Chess with a Drop of Magic" — standard chess with a hand of spells layered on top. Animoca Brands developed the game "in partnership with Chess.com," with five-time World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen attached as a co-developer, according to Animoca Brands' launch announcement. Carlsen said at the time: "I am excited that Anichess is bringing innovation to chess with spells and strategy gaming elements." The project's latest competitive season, Season 9: "The Circuit," went live July 9, 2026, per Anichess's own announcement — the timeliest reason to know how the underlying game actually works.

Kingslay replaces checkmate

Matches end differently than in standard chess. Anichess calls its win condition Kingslay: capture the opposing king to win. Per Anichess's documentation, "there's no check or checkmate," and stalemate doesn't apply — a king can walk into danger like any other piece, since there's no warning system to stop it. Castling, en passant, and promotion all carry over unchanged from standard chess rules, per the same docs.

The spell system

Before each match, both players select three spells from their personal pool, according to Anichess's how-to-play guide. New accounts start with 7 of the game's 14 total spells unlocked; the remaining seven open "after completing your first 1-3 matches," per the docs. Spells cost mana, which accrues passively at "1 mana every turn you don't cast, up to a cap of 8," and each spell carries its own per-game cast limit, according to Anichess's spell reference.

Five of the default-unlocked spells and their mechanics, per that reference:

• Slip (1 mana, 5 casts) — move a Pawn, Knight, or Rook one square diagonally without capturing, and steal 1 mana from the opponent.
• Parkour Mech (3 mana, 2 casts) — permanently transform a piece other than the King or Queen into a Knight.
• Bis-Hop 2.0 (4 mana, 3 casts) — let a Bishop leap over one piece in its path, capture included.
• Imposter (4 mana, 3 casts) — swap one of your pieces with an opponent's piece of the same type, excluding the King and Pawns.
• House Recruit (5 mana, 3 casts) — create a new Pawn on an empty square between the third and sixth ranks.

Anichess's spell list names these five as the default-unlocked set alongside two others it doesn't further detail; which two remain unspecified in the docs (see Open questions below).

Game modes

Anichess runs six named modes, per its documentation: Standard, a rating-based ladder where players "earn M8"; Checkmate Arena, an M8-gated tournament competing "for $CHECK"; Gambit, a buy-in mode where both players stake $CHECK and the winner takes the pot; Custom, a direct friend challenge with "no rating impact"; Training, against AI "at four difficulty levels"; and Tutorial, free to play with no account required. Beyond these standing modes, Anichess has also run standalone bracket events — its "Road to Magnus" qualifier opened to all players earlier this year, per Descout's prior coverage.

Season 9: The Circuit, and what it costs

Season 9 restructures the competitive calendar around daily play rather than occasional marquee events. Early access ran July 9-12, with results that didn't count toward the playoff; the scored season proper began July 13, per Anichess's announcement. Two tournaments run every day: one window from 21:00 to 23:00 HKT (13:00-15:00 UTC), the other from 09:00 to 11:00 HKT (01:00-03:00 UTC), according to Anichess and corroborated by eGamers.io.

Scoring awards three points for a win, one for a draw, and none for a loss. Entry alternates by day: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday run free; Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday are paid "Gambit" days requiring a buy-in of 50-100 $CHECK depending on the day, per Anichess's announcement. Each event's top five finishers split its prize pool 35%/25%/18%/12%/10%, with results reviewed for fair play and confirmed weekly on Discord, according to eGamers.io.

The season also adds three new systems, per Anichess's announcement and eGamers.io:

• Stages — a track toward daily rewards and playoff eligibility.
• Sanctums — practice spaces built around spell drills.
• Special Events — one-off matches run under altered rules.

$CHECK and M8

$CHECK is described in Anichess's own token documentation as "the Strategy Token for the Checkmate Ecosystem," with a fixed supply of 1,000,000,000 tokens and more than 59% earmarked for community and ecosystem growth, per Anichess's docs. It funds Gambit and Checkmate Arena entry directly and, through staking, generates M8 — a separate, non-transferable points layer players also earn by playing Standard matches, per the same documentation. M8 itself runs onchain on the Base network, according to third-party coverage from PlayToEarn and MagNFT; Anichess's own docs describe M8 as a points layer without naming the underlying chain.

By our tracking, Anichess's public output currently reads as building, on six shipped events across the last 30 days.

Open questions

Per Anichess's spell list, five of the seven spells unlocked by default are named — Slip, Parkour Mech, House Recruit, Bis-Hop 2.0, and Imposter — but the remaining two aren't identified in the material we reviewed. And neither Anichess's Season 9 announcement nor eGamers.io's coverage discloses the total size of each event's prize pool, only the top-five split percentages — so the dollar or $CHECK value of a win isn't yet publicly stated.