Postal Gambit
Chess by email, the way postal chess used to work
Correspondence chess over your own email
Postal Gambit is a local-first desktop app that keeps your games, enforces the rules and turns each move into a ready-to-send email in whatever mail client you already use. Your games never touch the network: your email is the board between you and your friend.
Slow, thoughtful chess with a real person. One move a day is a fine pace.
The game list, the board with its coordinates and the move history, in the dark theme.
How a game flows
No matchmaking, no lobby, no clock. You and a friend, moving at your own pace, with your own email in between.
Make your move
Click your piece, click its square. The board enforces the rules of chess: legality, check and mate. Stalemate, insufficient material, fivefold repetition and the seventy-five-move rule end a game by themselves; a threefold repetition or fifty-move draw is reached by offering a draw, since there is no claim button.
Send the email
Postal Gambit writes the whole email for you: a short note, an ASCII board diagram and the game record. One button opens it as a draft in your own mail client; another copies it to your clipboard for webmail. You press send.
Import the reply
When the reply lands, click its one-click import link or paste the email text into the app. Even a bare move like Nf6 from an opponent without the app imports fine. The board updates and it is your move again.
Supporting Postal Gambit
Postal Gambit is free and stays free. There is no paid tier, no licence key and no feature held back behind a donation. If it has replaced something you were paying for or simply saved you an afternoon, a contribution supports its maintenance and continued development. The same button sits at the foot of the app's own window; it hands the address to your browser, so the app itself still opens no connection.
Donate