Terms of Service
Last updated 2 August 2026
These are the terms you play under. Signing in accepts them; if you would rather not, close the game and nothing has happened.
Tip Chess is free, and it is not gambling. There is nothing to stake and nothing to win. A thank-you sent after a game is a voluntary gift from one player to another - never a wager, never a prize, and never anything you are owed or owe.
Who these terms are with
Tip Chess is operated at tipchess.com by Nimiq Labs Ltd, a private limited company registered in the United Kingdom under company number 11553320, at Kemp House, 128 City Road, London EC1V 2NX, United Kingdom. "We" and "us" mean that company; "you" means the person playing. Email info@nimiq.com.
What Tip Chess is
A 3D chess game you play against other people in real time, with clocks, ratings and a leaderboard, plus a computer opponent to play offline. It is free: no entry fee, no subscription, no in-app purchase, no advertising.
To play against a person you need Nimiq Pay and a Nimiq wallet, because your wallet address is your account - it is what lets opponents recognise you between games and what makes a thank-you possible. You must be old enough to hold a Nimiq Pay wallet, and at least 13.
Thank-yous are gifts
After a game, either player may send the other a small amount of NIM as a thank-you. This is the part most easily misread, so it is worth being exact.
A thank-you is:
- Voluntary and unsolicited. You decide whether to send anything and how much. Sending nothing is the normal case and carries no consequence.
- A gift. It is given freely for a game already played and already over. Nothing is promised or provided in return, and no player is ever entitled to receive one.
- Independent of the result. Winners and losers alike can send and receive. You may thank the person who beat you; that is rather the point.
- Straight from you to them. It goes from your wallet to your opponent's address in full. We take no cut, fee or commission, and it does not pass through us.
A thank-you is not:
- A stake, wager or bet. Nothing is risked on the outcome. You cannot lose money by losing, or win money by winning.
- A prize or a pot. Nothing is collected before a game and no amount is set aside for or promised to anyone.
- Payment for anything. Not for the game, not for playing, not for a result. Nobody is buying or selling.
- A debt. Nobody owes one and nobody is owed one. There is no way to demand, chase or enforce one, and no consequence for not sending one.
- An advantage. Sending or receiving one has no effect on your rating, on who you are matched against, on the clock or on the rules. It moves a total on the support leaderboard, which confers nothing.
Games are decided by chess and nothing else. No part of a game depends on chance, and no outcome decides who receives money. Using Tip Chess to run a wager or a staked match breaches these terms - see Playing fairly.
A thank-you can only be sent within ten minutes of a game finishing, to someone you actually played. Once sent it is final and irreversible: a blockchain payment cannot be recalled or refunded by anyone, including us. Send only what you are happy to give away, and check the address and amount on the Nimiq Pay confirmation screen before approving it. Whether a gift is taxable where you live is a question for you; we give no tax, legal or financial advice.
We never hold or move your money
Tip Chess is not a wallet, an exchange, a custodian or a payment service. It never holds your funds, never takes custody of them, and cannot move them. It has no access to your private keys or recovery phrase.
Every payment is made by you, inside Nimiq Pay. The game can do no more than suggest a recipient and an amount; Nimiq Pay shows you both and asks you to confirm. That confirmation screen - not this game - authorises a payment, and nothing leaves your wallet without it. Declining is always available and always free of consequence.
Because the payment is yours and the network is public, confirmation times, network fees and outages are outside our control. If a payment fails, is delayed, or goes to the wrong place because you confirmed the wrong thing, we cannot recover it.
Ratings and the leaderboard
Your rating moves only when both players report the same result, or when the server saw a player abandon the game. The leaderboard counts only payments confirmed on the Nimiq chain between two people who really played each other. Being on it wins you nothing: no prize, no advantage.
It is public - a display name and a Nimiq address, visible to anyone without signing in. The Privacy Notice covers what that means; choose a display name accordingly.
We may correct ratings and totals that are wrong or manipulated, and remove entries obtained by cheating.
Playing fairly
Please do not:
- Use a chess engine or outside help in a game against a person. Play the engine as much as you like - it is in the menu - but bringing one to a rated game against someone who thinks they are playing you is cheating.
- Manipulate the rating or the leaderboard, by arranged results, extra accounts, self-tipping or any other route.
- Choose a name or write a message that is abusive, hateful, obscene or impersonates someone else. A message on a payment is published permanently on a public blockchain.
- Stake or bet on games played here, or use the game to arrange or settle one.
- Attack or overload the service - scripted clients, automated play, scraping beyond ordinary use, or interfering with other people's games.
- Break the law, or use the game to move the proceeds of it.
- Pressure anyone into paying, or suggest a thank-you is expected or owed. It never is.
If you do, we may end your access and remove your record. Deliberately spoiling other people's games is the one thing here we have no patience for at all.
Your account, and deleting it
Your Nimiq address is your account - no password to lose, nothing to transfer between devices. Keep your wallet and recovery phrase safe: anyone holding them can sign in as you, and we cannot tell the difference or restore an account taken that way.
You can have your record deleted at any time. Email info@nimiq.com with your Nimiq address or display name. We remove your player record - address, keys, name, rating, game record and leaderboard row - and confirm when it is done. It cannot be undone, and it does not touch the blockchain, which nobody can delete from. Signing in again afterwards starts you over as a new player.
The game is provided as it is
We run Tip Chess with care and make no promises about it. It is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose or non-infringement. In particular we do not promise that:
- the game will be available, uninterrupted or free of faults;
- a game in progress will survive a dropped connection, a restart or a bug;
- ratings, results or leaderboard totals will always be correct;
- a thank-you will always be recognised and credited, or credited promptly;
- your opponent will be pleasant, honest, or any good at chess.
We may change, suspend or discontinue the game or any part of it at any time, including the leaderboard, ratings and thank-yous. If we shut it down we will try to say so in advance, but a free game carries no guarantee of continuity: do not treat your rating or record as permanent.
What we are responsible for
To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost profits, lost data, or the loss of a rating, a record or a game.
We are specifically not responsible for the money: payments you choose to send, payments you expected and did not receive, wrong amounts, wrong addresses, network fees, delays or failures on the Nimiq network, the value of NIM, or anything Nimiq Pay does. Each of those is outside our control and inside yours.
Where liability cannot lawfully be excluded, ours is limited to what you have paid us for the game, which is nil. Nothing here excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be excluded by law. If you are a consumer, your statutory rights are unaffected.
Everything else
Changes. We may update these terms; the date at the top changes with them, and if a change matters you will be asked to accept it before you next play.
The game itself. Tip Chess, its code, artwork and name stay ours. You get permission to play it and nothing more.
If part of this fails. If a clause turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still stands. Not enforcing something once does not mean giving it up.
Which law applies. These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and its courts have jurisdiction. If you are a consumer, this does not remove the protection of the mandatory law of the country you live in, or your right to bring a claim in its courts.