Tune in tonight for Dinner And A Rematch, a special New Year’s Eve Dinner And A Movie at 8:30PM ET at webcast.livephish.com. Phish will play the audience in an online chess game as we present an archival webcast of Phish’s 12/31/95 show from Madison Square Garden. In anticipation of tonight’s rematch, we present a Schvice Sports Supplement looking back on the 1995 Band vs. Audience chess matches.

As we announced last week, the game itself will be hosted at Chess.com and will begin right at the start of the show.

Here’s a few details on how to play tonight’s game – we’ve made some adjustments since our initial announcement as we better understood the platform and its quirks.

If you haven’t signed up, you’ll need to create an account at Chess.com (it’s free to join). Once you’ve done that, go to livephi.sh/chess to join the game. You can play at any time once it starts. You do not need to join the ‘Phish Audience New Year’s Eve 2020 Club’ to play. However, joining the club may be useful to gather and discuss the audience moves.

In this game mode, known as “Vote Chess”, the audience will have 90 seconds to vote on each move — vote by moving the chess pieces as appropriate and then click submit. After the 90 seconds, the game will take about a minute to tally votes and update the audience move.

The band’s moves will register as soon as the band responds. The band however is not limited to 90 seconds and their move may take several minutes. ALSO: in what may be another 1995 throwback, the board will not automatically update after each move. You will need to refresh your browser to see the audience move after it has been tallied and to vote on the current position after the band move. You will see a notification within the game once the band has made their move.

As this game mode is typically intended for games played over multiple days and measured in minutes and not seconds, the timer on the page (that says 1 minute) doesn’t serve any real utility for this game. It won’t update to zero until the time is up.
Stay tuned during set breaks to watch the band join in from their various homes.

If you’d like to make one of two fortifying chess cheese boards (or chessboard cookies), you can find recipes at livephi.sh/chessmenu! And, as a reminder, we’re also raising money tonight for The WaterWheel Foundation. Donate anytime at phish.com/waterwheel.

Happy 2021 and good luck – you’ll need it!