How to Play Chess

The point of chess, like any other game, is to defeat your opponent. In chess, the way you accomplish this is by putting the enemy king in "checkmate." To understand how to do this, you will need to understand how the pieces move. In chess, there are 32 pieces, 16 for each player. There are 64 squares on the board. The starting position is shown below on the first diagram. Note that the light colored squares are always at the upper left and the lower right. Otherwise you have the board turned sideways!

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The whole second row for each player is filled with 1 pawn per square. These look like little minute-men of the Revolutionary War. In all of the corners of the board, there are pieces called "rooks." These look like miniature castles or towers. Next to them are pieces called "knights." These look like horses. Next come bishops which look like bigger pawns. After that come the king and the queen. There are a few tricks to remember where they all go. The easiest to remember are the rooks because they occupy the corners and the pawns because they occupy the whole second row.

After that, beginners mix up knights, bishops, kings, and queens. What people do you normally think of when you hear the word "castle?" Many think of knights, which guard the area around the castle. All of the knights are next to a rook. The 2 center spots are occupied by the king and the queen. Girls generally want to look very good and fashionable. Well, the queen likes her shoes to match the floor. The black queen goes on the black center square and the white queen on the white center square. The bishops fill the empty spots. Another way to remember bishops is that for a long time, church and and state went hand and hand, or side by side just as they are on a chess board.

Next, we will look at how the pieces move. White always moves first. Another general rule is that a piece can never occupy the same square as another piece. It can, however, take (sometimes called capture) an enemy piece on the square it wants to move to. Also, when you take or capture a piece, you remove the piece you capture from the board and replace it with your piece that took it. We'll take a look at how the rook moves because it is the easiest to remember.

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The rook can move up, down, left, and right along the squares. The spots marked with arrows are where it can go. You will notice that white's rook can take a black piece. However, it cannot jump over it. White cannot jump over his own pawn or land on its square. No piece can be on the same square as another piece at the same time. A rook moves horizontally or vertically.

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The bishop is the next easiest piece to remember the move for. A light-squared bishop can only go on white squares (represented by yellow) and the dark-squared can only go on black (represented by blue). The bishops travel only on diagonals. Bishops can never move to a square of a different color. You will notice that it cannot go to the upper-left diagonal because a pawn of its own color is blocking its progress. The black bishop cannot jump the white pawn, but it can go that direction by taking it.

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We just got through with the rook and bishop. The queen is the most powerful piece on the board. It can move just like both the rook and the bishop! It can go diagonally or straight. The choice is the player's. White can take the black pawn, but not jump over it. It can go straight like a rook and diagonal like a bishop.

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The king is the most valuable piece on the board. The whole point of the game is to put the king in "checkmate." Because of its value, beginners tend to forget that the king is a fighting piece. It can move just like the queen, except that it cannot go but one square in each direction. The king can capture other pieces. No two kings can ever meet each other. It is an illegal move to put your king adjacent to another.

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The two most awkward pieces on the board are the knight and the pawn. Firstly, the knight moves like no other piece on the board. It moves in an L shape. It always moves 2 squares one way, and one square to a right angle. You can see it on the left. The dots represent where the black knight can go. The knight is the only piece that can jump over other pieces. However, it cannot occupy the same square as another piece at the same time.

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The pawn move is very unorthodox compared to the other pieces. It can only advance, never retreat. Unless taking another piece, a pawn can only advance vertically. However it cannot take another piece directly in front of it. It can only take diagonally while advancing one square. If you look to the left, you will see that white has 3 possible moves: he can advance one square directly in front, he can take the pawn to the left, and he can take the pawn to the right. If there was a pawn in front of him, he would only have 2 moves: taking either way. Pawns will often block each other in a game. This doesn't seem too complicated, but it will when you take a look at the special moves.

In chess, there are three special moves. The first one is very easy to remember. On the first move for every pawn, you can advance two squares or only one if the player so chooses (as long as there is nothing blocking the path). However, a pawn can never take another piece two squares away. The other special moves are a little bit trickier. They are called "en passant" and "castling."

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En passant literally means "in passing" in French. This is a special pawn move that makes the game so that you cannot avoid direct attack with your pawns. You can see it on the diagram on the left. The diagram shows black's last move which was advancing his pawn in front of the king two squares. He could have pushed it just one square, but he chose to push it two. If he pushed it once, he would be under direct attack by the white pawn, but by pushing it twice, he avoided direct attack. Because of the en passant rule, white now has one chance on the very next move to take the pawn in the manner represented by the arrow shown on the left as if black had only advanced one square. That is an en passant capture. Many people still do not understand this by the time they reach intermediate play, so do not feel flustered if you do not know how to use this technique.

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The final special move is called castling. When you play, almost all of the action is in the center. The pieces are being taken and there are many threats. Do you want your king in the middle of the fray? Think of it this way. In the Revolutionary War, minute men walked up to each other about ten yards away. They took turns firing until they were ordered to charge or retreat. The land in between the enemies was completely barren. Do you want your general in the barren land? No! So when the Catholic priests were adding rules to chess, they added a special move which enabled the king to get out of the way: castling.

The way this is done is by clearing all of the pieces out of the way between the king and the rook. In one move, king moves two squares towards the rook, the rook then hops over the king and takes the square beside the king. Take a look at the diagram. White has just castled. If black wanted to castle right now, he could because all of the pieces are out of the way and neither the king nor the rook has moved. There are a few rules to this, though. You cannot castle if the rook you want to castle towards has ever moved. You also cannot castle if you have ever moved the king. You cannot castle if you are in check, you castle through check, or if you castle into check. To know about checks, read that section below.

Check and Checkmate

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This is simple enough. If your king is threatened (in danger of being taken on the next move), you are in check. There are three ways of getting out of check. If you are in check, you cannot make any move but get your king out of it. You can take the piece that is checking you, you can put one of your own pieces in front of it to block the check, or you can move the king. If you cannot safely do any of these, you are in a checkmate and you have lost the game. If a player so chooses, he can admit defeat by resigning from the game at any time except the first move (the game is considered cancelled in this case). You can see a checkmate to the left. White's king cannot take the queen because it would be in check if it did.

Stalemates

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Draws are more common in chess than in any other board game. This can be achieved in many ways. The first one is stalemate. This means that it is one person's turn to move, but he has nowhere to go. His king is trapped, meaning the king has nowhere to go but into check (an illegal move) and he either has no other pieces or has none that can move. If it is the other player's turn, it is not stalemate. Another way you can draw is by constant repetition. This is when both players move back and forth from one square to another 3 times. This only works if both players do this. The third is very long. If no piece is taken, a pawn hasn't moved, and no one has achieved checkmate or stalemate, then after 50 moves for both players, the game is declared a draw.

Also, a player can offer the opponent a draw. If he accepts, there is no winner or loser of the game and the game is over.

Promoting a Pawn

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We mentioned before that a pawn can only advance forward. So what happens when a pawn reaches the other side of the board? Well, it can turn into whatever piece you want except a second king! This is normally a queen, but instead it can be promoted into a knight, bishop, or a rook. There are certain cases where if you promote to a queen, it is stalemate, but if you promote it to a rook, in time it will be checkmate! If a pawn reaches the other side of the board, it cannot be promoted into a king. Otherwise, the promoting player would have an unfair advantage. You would need to checkmate him twice! On the left is an example where promoting to a queen on the next move would result in stalemate, but promoting to a rook would not -- and ultimately white can win. A better option would be moving the white king to f6 and promoting the pawn to a queen later.