Some "Easter eggs" are very well documented, while others remain hidden, waiting for an enthusiast dedicated enough to bring them to light. Today it's the turn of Facebook's messaging system, which apparently hides a chess game. With a simple command and a few keyboard shortcuts, you and a friend can start a match in seconds.
Easter Eggs in Unexpected Places
Even the most serious environments have hidden Easter eggs that expose the humor of their creators. In Google's search engine, examples are numerous: "Do a barrel roll" spins the screen in true Star Fox style, "Google in 1998" shows results with a very old version of the page, "zerg rush" triggers an attack of multiple 'O' letters that gobble everything in their path, "<Blink>" makes every instance of the word 'blink' blink, and "Atari Breakout" in the images section presents a clone of the classic game. Microsoft's history with Easter eggs dates back to the 1990s, and fortunately the concept is not limited to software; there are many examples of hardware (and not necessarily computers) with hidden messages.
A Hidden Chess Game in Facebook Messenger
What brings us here today is Facebook, or more precisely, its chat system Messenger. In essence, typing the phrase "@fbchess play" (without quotes) will start a chess game with the person you're talking to. Clicking on the pieces to move them doesn't work, so you must use keyboard shortcuts and coordinates: K for the king, Q for the queen, B for the bishops, K for the knights, R for the rooks, and finally P for the pawns. As an example: if we take the image above as a reference, typing "@fbchess Pd3" will move the corresponding pawn to square d3. If you need more help with the commands, type "@fbchess help".
The fact that it's a bit awkward to play will probably give rise to very funny situations, with obvious mistakes that will change the outcome of the game in a second. I admit that I have always been terrible at chess, but at a certain point in my life it turned out to be an excellent pastime. If you like chess, want to play with one of your contacts, and both of you are on Facebook, you now know how to do it.
