The people behind Inkwellmoorgame and their well-worn boards
Inkwellmoorgame began around a kitchen table with a battered wooden chess set, a backgammon board missing one checker and an argument about which website was best for a quick game after dinner. The argument never quite ended, so we started writing it down.
The desk is a small group of players spread across Britain: a club chess player who still remembers every blunder from a county match, a board-game collector with more boxes than shelf space, and a returner who picked chess up again after twenty years away. Between us we play most evenings, at most time controls, on most devices.
We review six platforms because six is enough to cover the different ways people enjoy chess and classic board games online without drowning anyone in choice. Each one earns its place by being genuinely worth your time, and each review is written only after weeks of ordinary play.
Wren, our guide, is the bird you see across the site. She has opinions about the Caro-Kann and a weakness for battleship, and she pops up wherever a choice needs making. If you want to tell us we have something wrong, we would love to hear from you.
We play before we pronounce
No platform gets a score until our reviewers have used it as their main board for several weeks, on laptops and phones, in rated and casual games, at the hours when ordinary people actually play.
Free players come first in our maths
Every score considers what a player who never pays can do. Paid tiers are described fairly, but a platform earns its place by what it gives everyone, not by what it sells to a few.
Corrections are welcome and dated
Platforms change constantly. When a reader spots something out of date, we replay it, fix the review and note the date at the foot of the page, so you always know how fresh our words are.