A: The GameKnot server automatically checks all submitted moves for being valid and in accordance with the Chess Rules. In other words, if a move was submitted and accepted by the server, that means it is perfectly valid and within the rules of Chess.

Most often it is the pawn's "capture en passant" that is being mistaken for an illegal move.

A: Please visit the following page for more information about the emergency postponement.

A: The mini-tournament games are started automatically based on the player availability (up to 4 games per player in each mini-tournament). So if no games are being started for you in a mini-tournament, that means there are no players available to play against you at this time. Please simply wait and the games will be started for you as soon as other players either finish some of their current games in the mini-tournament or return from their vacations, etc..

A: As per the chess rules, if the last 50 consecutive moves have been made by each player without the movement of any pawn and without the capture of any piece, the game can be declared a draw by either of the opponents. The other player's approval is not required, and the game ends immediately and is recorded as a draw for both players.

To declare the draw in a game due to the 50-move rule, please use "Declare draw" link located directly below the game board.

A: Removing the vacation flag from your account does not automatically cancel the postponement for all your games. It is actually not recommended to cancel the postponements for your own games as your opponents might already be counting on using the extra time. Please simply continue making your moves normally and the original time control will be restored for all your games once the original postponement period is over.

A: If you are unable to select a particular chess piece on the board, that means it has no valid moves available. Most often it happens when the piece is "pinned" -- i.e. it is in the way of an attacking piece of the opposite color, so you cannot move your piece without placing your King in check. In other words, the chess piece you are trying to move is protecting your King from being captured, so it cannot be moved.

A: We do not specifically support any particular smartphones or tablets, but if your handheld device provides full support for HTML 4.01 and JavaScript 1.5, you should have no problems using it with GameKnot.

If your mobile device has a small screen, we also provide a mobile version of GameKnot over at m.gameknot.com. It's a smaller and lighter version of our website however, so it doesn't have all the features present on our main website.

A: Players can be moved to a higher tournament section if they exceed the rating limit of their section after the 1st round (and only after the 1st round), so all games in all lower sections in the same tournament have to be completed first. The reason for it is so that not only the winner in each tournament group is established, but in case they are moved to the higher section, the runner-ups are determined as well to advance to the 2nd round in the same section instead of the winner. Please be patient and a separate announcement will be made once the 2nd round can be started.

A: A player can be marked as a winner with an icon (), if they will advance to the next round regardless of the results of the remaining games. It is possible that someone else in the same tournament group will end up with the top score as well, and they will advance to the next round too, but only the players who are guaranteed to advance are marked as such at the time it becomes certain.

A: Please use the following page to submit questions, comments and suggestions to GameKnot's customer support.

A: Please visit the following page to request password recovery service.

A: If you need to postpone your games due to a vacation, or holidays, or an illness, you can do so via the corresponding link located directly below your active games list.

A: Depending on how busy the GameKnot servers are at the time, there is a delay of up to an hour for a timed-out game to be processed by the system. The game is removed from your active games list as soon as the clock reaches 0, but you will only get a notification about the time out after it was processed. Usually it takes about 10-15 minutes, but it can be up to an hour if the system is especially busy.

What likely happened was — when you logged in to your account and accessed your active games list, the game in question has already timed out and was removed from your list of active games. Any time remaining on the clock that you saw was for other games, and not for the timed out game, that was already removed from the list and simply not processed yet. You started making moves in other games, and eventually the timed out game was finally processed and you received a notification a few minutes later.

A: All your past games are saved if you have a premium subscription, but as noted on the premium subscription page, past games older than 30 days are automatically deleted for free accounts. Which means if you have finished a number of games while using a free membership, they are likely to be deleted after 30 days and will no longer be available even if you subscribe later on. Unless your opponent has a premium membership, and the games were saved for them.

In other words, the only guaranteed way to have access to all your past games, is a premium membership — all your past games are saved on the server indefinitely (for as long as you maintain your premium subscription).

A: First of all, thank you for your suggestion. We do appreciate and consider all suggestions. However, in this case, there is an important consideration that prevents us from implementing it — even if a player only has a single move available to them, they are still entitled to use the time allotted to them for that move to think over the subsequent moves. Also, you can simply set up a conditional move from your side, based upon that single move, which will equally speed up the game.

A: You can access the player's profile/stats page and if you played any games against that player before, there will be a "Past games against …" line near the top of the page. Clicking on "Past games" part will take you to the page that lists all your past games against that particular player.

Alternatively, you can access your win/loss/draw table and then click on the number in the "Games" column to access the list of your past games against that particular player.

A: Please simply add the player to your ignore list and they won't be able to send you any messages, or challenge you to a game, or join any of your games. Please note that the games that are already in progress will not be cancelled, but all game comments made by the player will be removed.

A: You can cancel your premium membership subscription or check its status using the same page where you subscribed: cancel subscription.

You can cancel at any time and the premium membership status will expire for your account at the end of the billing period (i.e. the subscription will not be automatically renewed). If there is no "cancel" button on the page, that means your subscription has already been cancelled and your premium membership will automatically expire on the date shown.

If you subscribed via PayPal, you can also cancel your premium subscription by logging in to your PayPal account.

A: Simply click on the player's username to access their profile/stats page, and the link to send them a private message will be located on that page (in the middle).

A: An unrated game can only be started when you challenge another player to a game directly (there is an option to make the game unrated on the challenge form). It is not possible to create an unrated open challenge. It is also not possible to change the game's status to unrated (or rated) after the game is already in progress.