Terms of service

Last updated 9 October 2026.

1. The service

Mate Squad (matesquad.com) is run by Francesco Fano, Hamburg (see the Impressum). It lets you play team chess variants in your browser, alone against bots, with friends, or with strangers, and talk in a community forum. It is free, carries no advertising and has no paid features.

The service is in beta: rules, modes, ratings and features change often, sometimes without notice, and ratings or game records may be reset. We may suspend or end the service at any time; where it is practical we announce it in the Community first.

2. Accounts

• You can play as a guest without an account. An account keeps your rating, friends and posts.
• There is no age limit: the game is for everyone, kids included. An account asks for nothing but a name and a password. If you are a parent and want a child's account closed, write to us.
• One account per person. Keep your password to yourself; what happens under your account is on you until you tell us it was taken over.
• Names are 3 to 20 letters, digits, _ or -. Don't pick a name that impersonates someone, a staff role, or is offensive; we may rename an account that does.
• You can close your account at any time on your Profile page. We may close an account that breaks these terms, or that has been inactive for more than two years, after a notice to its email where one is set.

3. Fair play

• In rated games you play on your own: no chess engines, no outside help, no second account on the other side, no agreed results.
• Don't leave rated games on purpose. Leaving games in a row pauses quick play on a ladder (5 minutes, then 30 minutes, 2 hours, 24 hours); a clean day takes you a step back down. Resigning a game before every seat has moved counts as leaving it.
• Rated games are between players who don't share a network, and two players who have met in five rated games in a day play the rest of the day's games together unrated.
• Don't flood the service with games, accounts, requests or messages, and don't use scripts to play or to create accounts. Daily limits per person and per network exist for everyone's sake.

4. Community rules

The forum is for talk about the game, chess and the site, in any language. Criticism, disagreement, chess talk about killing and crushing, and short messages are all fine. Not allowed:

• spam: ads, selling, promotion unrelated to Mate Squad, crypto, SEO text;
• insulting, harassing, mocking or bullying a person;
• slurs, or attacks on people for race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexuality or disability;
• threats of real violence, or praising real violence or terrorism;
• sexual content; encouraging suicide or self-harm;
• another person's private details (home address, phone, email, real identity);
• heavy or repeated vulgarity, and anything illegal under German or EU law.

You keep the rights to what you write. By posting you let us show it on the site, with your name, for as long as the post exists; posts stay, without your name, when you close your account, so delete the ones you want gone first.

5. Moderation

Every new post and reply is first checked automatically against the rules above (an AI model run on Cloudflare); a post that fails is hidden and queued for a human moderator, who restores it if the check was wrong. Other players can report a post; reports hide it until a moderator looks. The moderator may hide, delete, lock or pin posts and may pause or close accounts that break these terms. Repeated or serious violations lead to longer pauses and, in the end, to closing the account.

6. Reporting and contesting a decision (Digital Services Act)

• Report: use the Report button on a post or reply, or write to hello@matesquad.com with the link and why it is illegal or against the rules. We look at reports in the order they come in, normally within a few days, and a report from a trusted flagger or about clearly illegal content first.
• Decision: when a post you wrote is hidden or removed, or your account is paused or closed, you can see or ask for the reason, and you can ask for a review by writing to the same address within six months. A human looks at it and answers.
• Misuse: accounts that send clearly unfounded reports repeatedly may lose the ability to report.

7. What we don't promise

The service is provided as it is, free of charge. We don't promise that it is always available, free of errors, or that ratings, games or posts are kept forever. We are liable without limit for intent and gross negligence, and for injury to life, body or health. For simple negligence we are liable only for the breach of an essential obligation (one the service cannot work without), and then only for the foreseeable, typical damage. Anything beyond that is excluded. Mandatory consumer protection law stays unaffected.

8. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms; the date at the top shows the current version, and a notable change is announced in the Community. If you keep using the service after a change, the new terms apply to you. If you don't agree, close your account.

9. Law

German law applies, to the exclusion of the UN Sales Convention. If you are a consumer living in another EU country, the mandatory protections of your own country's law still apply to you.