Chess has existed in some form for several thousand years. The game as we know it today started to take shape in the early 1800's. There is no luck or chance in chess; just two players and their wits. (Well, sometimes there is more than two players, as when Gary Kasparov competed against thousands of players on the internet in 1999!)
Chess is played by all types of people (and machines) from all over the world. Games can be played slow, quick, or blindingly fast.
Of course, before you can play at any speed, you'll need to learn the rules...
The Pieces and How They Move
There are 6 unique pieces in the game of chess. Entire books have been written about each piece.
The diagram below illustrates the starting positions of the chess pieces.
A chess board is an 8x8 grid composed of squares of alternating color. The squares are referred to as "light" and "dark", regardless of what their colors may actually be (white/black, pink/red, tan/brown/, etc...). Players take turns moving pieces, and the goal is to trap the enemy king. White always moves first.
Read on to learn more about each piece...
The rooks are the simplest pieces to understand. Rooks move horizontally and vertically. You can move a rook as many unoccupied squares as you wish, until you are blocked by one of your own pieces or capture an enemy piece. When a rook captures an enemy piece, it occupies that piece's square.
Bishops are another simple piece to understand. Bishops move diagonally, and you can move them as many free spaces as you want. This brings up an important point about bishops: they can only move to and attack squares that are the same color as their starting square! Each player starts the game with a light bishop and a dark bishop.
Knights are one of the coolest pieces in chess, and it's not just because they look like horses. You can use knights to pull off some dirty tricks if you know what you're doing! We'll get to that in a second. First, let's review the basics. Knights move in an L shape. They move 2 squares in one direction, and then 1 square perpendicular to their original 2 squares. Jeez, it's hard to describe this piece in words! Check out the diagram and see what I mean.
Knights can jump over pieces (both their own and the enemies). They only capture the piece they land on, however. Notice that by the nature of how knights move, they always attack a square that is the opposite color of the square they are standing on.
Pawns are the shock troopers of your army. Don't let their humble appearence fool you; pawns are a very important part of any chess game.
A pawn that has not moved yet can move one or two squares forward (as long as they are not blocked by another piece). After a pawn has moved once, it can only move one square forward or attack diagonally. Pawns do not attack the piece in front of them. Pawns attack the two squares that are diagonally in front of them. When a pawn captures an enemy piece on a diagonal square, it moves to that square.
The diagram below illustrates the ways a pawn can move. The left pawn can move one or two squares forward, because it is still at its starting position. The middle and right pawns can move one square forward. Each pawn attacks the two squares diagonally in front of it (the red X's).
Pawns have a special move called en passant. When a pawn moves two squares on it's first move, an adjacent enemy pawn can capture it as if it only moved one square. The diagrams below illustrate this move. In the left diagram, it is white's turn to move. In the middle diagram, white has moved his pawn two spaces. The rightmost diagram shows the black pawn capturing the white pawn as if it had only moved one space.
When a pawn makes it to the enemy's back rank, it can be turned into another piece (rook, knight, bishop, or queen). In real life, players almost always convert their pawn into a queen, but there have been notable exceptions. It is possible for a player to have 9 queens on the board (1 original queen + 8 converted pawns), although this is very rare! In chess endgames, pawns become quite powerful, since the player who can get a pawn to the back rank first can convert it to a queen and gain a huge advantage.
The queen is considered to be the most powerful piece in chess. The queen is like a rook and bishop combined into one piece: she can move horizontally, vertically, and diagonally. Look at the queen in the diagram and observe all the squares she is attacking. That's a lot of firepower!
In the "old days", the queen was considered so powerful that if your opponent attacked it, he was supposed to say "queen check" to warn you. This rule does not exist today, so make sure your queen is protected!
Beginner players often get confused about which squares the king and queen go on when the board is setup at the start of the game. Let's look at the starting position again:
Remember this sentence: "Queen on color." The black queen goes on a black square, and the white queen goes on a white square.
Ahh, the king. All this fighting and warfare is about him.
The king can move one square in any direction. A king is in "check" if he is being attacked by an enemy piece. (It is chess courtesy to say "check" when you attack your opponent's king). If your king is in check, you must get him out of check. If you can't, then your king is checkmated and you have lost. Sorry. That's chess.
The king can capture an enemy piece, as long as he isn't in check after capturing it.
Someone once asked me if you can check the enemy king with your king. The answer is "no", because if you moved next to the enemy king on your turn, he could capture you on his turn. However, the king can still have an important role in attacking the other king. Consider the two diagrams below, both of which show a black king that is checkmated. In the left diagram, the black king cannot take the white queen, because the white king is defending it. In the right diagram, the black king cannot escape check from the rook because the white king is attacking those squares.
Here are some ways to get out of check:
- Capture the piece that is attacking your king (if possible)
- Move your king out of the way (if possible)
- Block the attacking piece (if possible)
The king and a rook can perform a special move called "castling". When you castle, you actually get to move two pieces (king and rook) on one turn. This move is used very frequently in games, and you should make sure you understand it. It's only a matter of time before your opponent uses it.
The king can castle as long as the following conditions are met:
- The king AND the rook involved have not moved
- The king is not in check
- The squares between the king and the rook are not under attack by an enemy piece
- The squares between the king and the rook are empty
OK, enough preconditions. What happens when castling? The following:
- The king moves two squares toward the rook that he is castling with
- The rook moves next to the king, on the side closest to the center of the board
For example, when the white king castles kingside, the white king moves 2 squares to the right, and the white king rook moves 2 squares to the left. Here is an example of before-and-after the kings castle kingside:
And here are the kings castling queenside:
When castling, always move the KING first! If you moved the rook first, people would think you are just moving the rook by itself! A computer program would consider your turn over after you moved the rook. Don't expect much sympathy from humans, either: technically, tournament chess rules say that if you touch the rook first, you are ONLY allowed to move the rook.
"Castling into it" is a chess term for when a player castles and puts his king in danger. You want to avoid this. Castling is usually a good idea, but sometimes it can actually be a bad move!
Like most games, chess ends with a win, loss, or draw. When you are playing in a tournament, a win is worth 1 point, a draw is 1/2 a point, and a loss is worth 0 points.
You can lose a chess game in one of the following ways:
- Your king is checkmated
- You run out of time
- You resign (i.e. "quit", "throw in the towel", "go home and play checkers")
- You don't show up to the game. (Don't laugh. It happens.)
The VAST majority of non-drawn games among masters and grandmasters end with one player resigning. Since these players are at such a high level, it is considered common sense for one of them to resign when it becomes obvious they can't win. However, this doesn't mean you should resign when your situation is bleak! I recommend all beginners play until they are checkmated. You never know when your opponent might make a mistake.
A draw - or a tie - can happen in one of several ways:
- One player offers a draw and the other accepts
- A stalemate occurs (see below)
- There aren't enough pieces on the board for either side to checkmate the other
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- *If the same position with the same player is repeated 3 times in a row
- *If there have been more than 50 consecutive moves without a pawn move or a capture
*The starred rules may vary depending on where you are playing.
A stalemate is when it is a player's turn to move and his king is not in check, but he cannot make a valid move. "What? That's impossible!" you say. Not only is it possible, but it can happen quite often in amateur endgames! Here is a picture with white to move:
...the only problem is, white CAN'T move! In this situation, it looks like black got greedy and promoted a pawn to a queen on the previous move, without checking to see if a stalemate would occur.
When there are a few pieces on the board and you have much more firepower than your opponent, DON'T let them get a draw by causing a careless stalement! Conversely, if you are massively outgunned, TRY to get into a stalement position. Be warned that the line between a "checkmate" and a "stalement" is very thin...
Perpetual check is when you can check your opponent forever. By itself, perpetual check is not a draw. In practice, though, once you check your opponent for the up-teenth time and he realizes he can't avoid more checks, offer him a draw and he'll probably accept.
The following diagram shows another drawn game. The pawns cannot move, and the kings cannot get into position to attack the enemy pawns.
When your opponent loses, you win. This is more fun than you losing.
There is no score in a game of chess. However, chess players have noticed that certain pieces are more powerful than others (all other things being equal).
- Pawn : 1
- Knight : 3
- Bishop : 3
- Rook : 5
- Queen : 9
- King : Priceless
This chart says that a knight is roughly as effective as 3 pawns, a rook is roughly as effective as 5 pawns, etc... Beware that these are just approximations. They provide some good guidelines, but don't blindly follow them.
You might hear someone say that a bishop is worth 3.5 points (slightly more powerful than a knight). The reasoning is that a bishop has a longer range than a knight. A counter-argument is that a knight can attack squares of any color. The argument can go either way. Once you learn more about the strategy and tactics of chess, you can decide whether you are a "bishop person" or a "knight person". (Although if you want to win games, you should become a "King Queen Bishop Knight Rook Pawn Person")
This is how you drive a car: step on the gas to accelerate, step on the brake to slow down, use the clutch to shift, and rotate the steering wheel to turn.
Now go win the Indy 500.
What? You say there's more to driving a car than just knowing how to, umm, drive it? Yeah, I know what you mean. Chess is like that, too. It's great to know how the pieces move, but it's even *better* to know what you can do with them!
A piece is "pinned" if moving it would expose another piece to an unacceptable attack. Consider the two diagrams below. In the left diagram, the white rook is pinned to the white king by the black bishop. White could not move the rook even if he wanted to. If he moved the rook, the black player would have to tap him on the shoulder and say, "Sorry, your piece is pinned."
In the right diagram, white would like to move his knight away from the attacking pawn. However, his knight is pinned to his queen by the black bishop. It is perfectly legal for white to move his knight in this case. However, it probably wouldn't be a good idea since black would capture the queen (well, from black's perspective, I'm sure it's a great idea!).
The moral of this story is to try to avoid getting pinned!
A skewer is almost like a reverse pin. A skewer happens when a piece must move to avoid being captured, yet by moving, it allows another valuable piece to be captured.
Once again, a picture is worth a thousand words. Consider the diagram below to the left. It is black's turn to play, and he is in check from the white bishop. The black king has to move...but doing so will allow his queen to be captured! Tough cookies. Black has to move the king and then watch as his queen is lost.
In the diagram to the right, it is black's turn to move. His queen is getting attacked by the white bishop. Unlike the previous example, black can choose whether to move the queen or not. He would probably move the queen to defend the rook, and then the white bishop would take the rook, followed by the black queen capturing the bishop. It wouldn't be a total loss for black, but he would have traded his rook for white's bishop, which isn't an even exchange.
A discovered attack happens when you move a piece and clear the path for another piece in your army to attack the enemy.
Look at the diagram to the left below. It is white's turn to move. He moves his knight to the square marked with the 'X', resulting in the diagram to the right.
Ouch, this is painful for black! His queen is being attacked by the white knight, but he can't do anything about it because he has to get his king out of check! All black can do is move his king out of check - or temporarily block the rook with his queen - and then watch as his queen is captured.
The essence of a discovered attack is that you suddenly unleash two (or more) attacks on the enemy, forcing him to make a hard choice about which attack to respond to.
A fork is when a piece attacks two other pieces at the same time. Knights are great at forking, but other pieces can do it, too.
The left diagram below shows a white knight forking the black king and queen. In the middle diagram, a white pawn is forking two enemy rooks. In the right diagram, the white queen is forking the black king and rook.
Bishops, rooks, and kings can also fork. Like a discovered attack, a powerful fork will force your opponent to make a hard decision about which threat to defend against.
A sacrifice is when you let one of your pieces get captured without any hope of capturing an enemy piece of equivelent value in return. Sacrifices are like the homeruns of chess. The crowd loves 'em. And they can be quite exciting...when they work.
The word "sacrifice" is sometimes misunderstood. For a sacrifice to truly be a sacrifice, there cannot be a line of play that lets you win back material in a couple moves. That is merely an interesting combination. A true sacrifice is when there is no hope of immediately getting material compensation back.
If you're a beginner, I don't recommend sacrifices. However, there can be situations in which they are useful. For example, if you have a massive number of pieces swarming down on the enemy king's position and most of your opponent's pieces are on the other side of the board, it may be worth sacrificing a piece in order to tear up the enemy pawn structure and assault the king. Think carefully before you do this, though. If your opponent manages to fend you off long enough to get reinforcements into position, you may be in for a world of hurt...
Checking your opponent's king can be a very powerful move...or a totally pointless one. Just because you can check the enemy king doesn't mean you should. Some beginners check the enemy king every chance they get, which isn't a good strategy for long term success.
Here are some guidelines for when to check. Every situation is different, but these are some good ideas to think about if you have the opportunity to check.
Consider checking if:
- The enemy king trapped and has no defenders (this leads to checkmate).
- You can make the check part of a skewer, fork, discovered attack, or some other tactic.
- The king has not moved yet, and a check would force him to move and lose the ability to castle.
- You are losing badly and can force a draw by repetition or perpetual check.
Consider not checking if:
- You have a better move.
- The king can defend himself by developing a piece (such as moving out a bishop).
- You and your opponent are about to make the same move for the third time, causing a draw (this is bad if you're winning, but good if you're losing).
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