Chess is a wonderful game, but it is not the only one. These classics have centuries of history, active online rooms and lessons that carry straight back to the sixty-four squares.
Why a chess player should learn a second game
Every chess player hits a plateau eventually. Ratings stall, openings feel stale and evenings at the board start to feel like work. A second game is one of the best remedies. It refreshes your thinking, teaches you new ways to look at a position and reminds you why you fell for board games in the first place.
Different games train different muscles. Go teaches you to think about the whole board at once rather than a single fight. Backgammon teaches you to make good decisions under uncertainty and to accept that a well-played game can still slip away. Draughts sharpens calculation of forcing lines. Each of these skills has a direct echo in chess.
There is also the social side. Your partner or friends may never want to play chess, but they might happily play backgammon, a modern tabletop game or a quick round of connect 4. A second game widens your circle of opponents, and a game shared with people you like is always worth more than one more rated blitz game.
Backgammon: the classic of good decisions
Backgammon is one of the oldest board games still widely played, and it rewards a very different kind of thinking from chess. The dice decide what moves you have available, but the skill lies in choosing the best of them: when to build a blocking structure, when to run your back checkers and when to hit an opponent’s blot.
PlayOK has some of the busiest backgammon rooms we found, with games starting within moments at almost any hour. Papergames.io and Board Game Arena also host it, the former being ideal for a quick game with a friend via a shared link. Learning the basic opening moves takes an evening; understanding them takes years, which is half the pleasure.
For chess players, backgammon offers a useful lesson in emotional control. You will sometimes play well and lose, and play badly and win. Learning to judge your decisions rather than your results is an excellent habit to carry back to chess, where it is just as true but much easier to forget.
Go and draughts: depth from simple rules
Go has rules you can learn in ten minutes and strategy you can study for a lifetime. Players take turns placing stones on a grid, trying to surround territory and capture groups. It is beautifully simple and dizzyingly deep, and its emphasis on balance across the whole board is a refreshing contrast to chess’s focus on the king.
PlayOK has active go rooms, and its rated play gives beginners a clear sense of progress. Start on a smaller board, such as nine by nine, before moving to the full nineteen by nineteen grid. Small boards teach the basic shapes and capturing tactics without the overwhelming openness of the full board.
Draughts, known as checkers in North America, deserves more respect than it often gets in Britain. Forced captures create long tactical sequences, and good players calculate deeply. PlayOK offers both the familiar English version and international draughts on a larger board, while Papergames.io keeps a lighter checkers board for casual games with friends.
Modern tabletop games without the rulebook
The last two decades have seen an explosion of modern board games, and Board Game Arena brings many of them into the browser. Titles such as Azul, Splendor, Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride and Wingspan are officially licensed, and the platform handles the rules and the scoring so that new players can learn simply by playing.
For chess players, abstract titles such as Azul are a natural first step. They reward planning, careful counting and reading your opponent’s intentions, all familiar skills. Heavier games add hidden information, engine-building and long-term strategy, which can feel like a completely new world even to experienced strategists.
Turn-based tables are the secret to fitting these games into a busy life. A game that would take two hours around a table can stretch over a week of short visits. Only the person who creates a premium table needs a paid membership, so one subscriber in a group can open up the full shelf for everyone.
Bringing the lessons back to the sixty-four squares
After a few weeks with other games, return to chess and notice what has changed. Many players find that go has improved their sense of the whole board, that backgammon has calmed their reaction to bad luck, and that draughts has sharpened their calculation. These shifts are subtle, but they show up in your games.
Variants such as Chess960 on Lichess are another way to keep the freshness going. They feel like chess, but strip away memorised openings and force you to think from move one. Combined with a regular second game, they make the plateau far less likely to return.
Above all, remember that board games are meant to be enjoyed. The online platforms on our shelf make it easier than ever to find an opponent for almost any classic game, at any hour, for free. Try something new this week. You may find a second favourite, and you will almost certainly come back to chess a little sharper.
A good way to begin is a simple rotation. Keep chess for two evenings a week, give one evening to backgammon or draughts on PlayOK, and save the weekend for a turn-based table of something modern on Board Game Arena with friends. Within a month you will know which second game has hooked you, and you will have widened your circle of opponents along the way, which is half the fun of any board.