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Facebook Messenger is already a fairly time-consuming tool, enabling you to keep in touch with any of your Facebook friends via instant messaging.
But one Reddit user has found something else hidden with the (now) many features of Messenger – a game of chess.
Users can play the game mid-conversation with friends, simply by dropping the command “@fbchess play” into the message window. A full chessboard appears, with players then using letters and numbers to move pieces around the board. Drop in the word “help” and the full list of instructions is sent to you.
In short, players use a single letter for each piece on the board – P, B, R, Q, K and N for pawn, bishop, rook, queen, king and knight respectively. This letter is then coupled with a square on the grid, and is sent as a message to carry out the move.
Messenger also gives you prompts to help along the way.
You can even pluck games from group threads into a private chat by adding a person’s name to the input, leaving you to get overly competitive without flooding others with notifications. It’s also possible to get multiple games going at once.
Messenger has greatly expanded out from just instant messaging in the last two years, with Facebook introducing emoji-rivalling Stickers. More interestingly, Mark Zuckerberg has spoken of his desire to see Messenger become a platform, with financial transactions and using the app as a way of placing and carrying out orders as well as dialogue with companies being trialled.
