Introduction to Chess - a beginner's guide
Chess is an ancient game dating back to the 7th century and is played by millions of people around the world to this day. However, the rules of chess are not the most straight-forward to get to grips with. Here is a thorough overview of the rules of chess, including the objective of the game, the board it’s played on, and what all the pieces are and how they move. Let’s get started.
The board
First things first, we obviously need to look at the board on which chess is played. The game board is 8 squares by 8 squares, each square alternating black and white in colour. It’s not hard to remember, but it’s an important first step in learning how the game of chess is played. Each square on the board has a coordinate associated to it, a kind of name by which you can identify it. This coordinate consists of the file that the square is in - kind of like the column of the board - which are designated a for the first file on the left, b for the second file on the left, all the way up to h for the file on the far right of the board. The second part of the coordinate is the rank that the square is in - this is kind of like the row of the board. These are numbered 1 for the first rank at the bottom of the board, all the way up to 8 at the top of the board. So, the square in the bottom left corner is given the coordinate a1, the square in the top left corner is given the coordinate a8, the square in the top right corner of the board is given the coordinate h8, and the square in the bottom right h1. These references will be useful later on when we move on to the algebraic notation used to describe moves.
The pieces
King
Let’s start with the most important piece - the king. Each player has one king in chess and it’s the one piece that you must protect at all cost. By allowing your opponent to put your king in checkmate (we’ll get on to what this means a bit later), you lose the game. The king can only move to an adjacent square during any given move - this includes diagonally adjacent squares. The king starts off on the back row of each player’s pieces, on the centre square that is not the same colour as the player’s pieces. This means that if you’re playing as white, your king begins on the square e1, since that is the most central black square on the back rank of the board from white’s perspective. Similarly, if you’re playing as black, your king will start on e8. Here are the kings in their starting positions.
Queen
The next piece to think about is the queen. She’s undoubtedly your second most important piece and by far the most useful. Queens can move in any direction, like the king, but an unlimited number of squares, meaning she can cover all diagonals from her current square, as well as the entire rank and file that she’s currently in. This makes her the most dangerous piece, since she has the best ability to capture your opponent’s pieces, which is also the reason to be extra wary about your opponent’s queen. The queen begins each game of chess next to the king. For white, she is on d1 and for black on d8. Here are the two queens in their starting positions.
Rooks
Your next most important piece is the rook. You begin each game of chess with 2 rooks. One on each corner of the board. For white, these would be at a1 and h1 and for black on a8 and h8. The rook can move along the rank or file that it is currently on for any number of squares. Here are the four rooks in their starting positions.
Bishops
Bishops are more minor pieces than the ones previously mentioned. Similarly to the rooks, you begin each game with 2 bishops. For white these are on c1 and f1 and for black these are on c8 and f8. Bishops can only move along diagonals, meaning that if I have a bishop on a1, it can move to any square along the main diagonal of the board all the way to h8. If the bishop is in the middle of the board, say on e5, it can also move to any square on that same diagonal from a1 to h8, but can also move along the other diagonal anywhere between b8 and h2. There are a couple of important things to notice at this point:
- Moving along diagonals means that the bishop never has the chance to move to differently-coloured squares.
- Each of your bishops start on differently-coloured squares to each other. This leads to naming each of them respectively your light-squared bishop and your dark-squared bishop.
Here are the four bishops in their starting positions.
Knights
The final major piece is the knight - yes, it’s basically just a horse. You begin each game of chess with 2 knights. White’s knights start on b1 and g1 and black’s knights start on b8 and g8. The way knights move is a little more complicated than the other pieces, but not too difficult once you get to grips with it. They are allowed to move 2 squares along a rank/file, then 1 square in a perpendicular direction. Makes sense? No, I didn’t think so. The description isn’t too easy to follow. It’s better just to see an example. See the board below.
Our knight is on e5 and has the chance to move to any of d3, d7, c4, c6, f7, f3, g4, g6. So for each of these square he has to move 2 squares in one direction, then turn 90 degrees and one square in the new direction. This seems a bit odd at first, and it is indeed one of the unique qualities of chess that make it such an interesting and indeed difficult game to master. One thing to note here is that whichever square the knight moves to, it’s always the opposite colour from the square it was on before. So from a black square, it must always move to a white square, and from a white square, it must always move to a black square.
Here are the four knights in their starting positions.
Pawns
Pawns are the minor pieces in chess. You begin each game of chess with 8 pawns - they sit in front of your other pieces. White’s pawns span file 2 and black’s pawns span file 7. Pawns can only move up the board, towards the other player. Their first move can be either 2 squares, so from file 2 up to file 4 for white, or just a single square, up to file 3. After that however, they can only move a single square forwards at a time. They are by far the weakest pieces, aside from one small perk they have - if they successfully reach the other side of the board (file 8 for white pawns and file 1 for black pawns), they can be promoted. Promotion is the process of turning a pawn into another piece (aside from the king, you may only have one king). This means that you can gain an advantage by promoting a pawn to a queen (which is the most typical piece to choose, since it’s the most useful).
Here is the setup of the board at the start of the game.
Rules of the game
The rules of chess are much easier to understand once you have a grasp of the pieces of how they move. The game always starts with white making the first move. From there, each player takes it in turn to make a move. It is not possible to pass a turn and not move any piece. This concept is fundamental to the game of chess, as sometimes a situation will occur where it would be beneficial to the player not to make any move at all. This can often be exploited by skilled players who realise that on the next turn, their opponent must do something to weaken their position, thereby giving them an advantage. The game continues like this until either checkmate or stalemate occurs, both of which we’ll discuss a little later. First, let’s look at how the pieces move.
Moving pieces
Above we saw how each piece moves. However, there is a caveat to that - the pieces that move along diagonals, ranks and files, which is everything except the knight, must be unhindered by other pieces. In other words, those pieces cannot jump over other pieces in their movements. THis means that if your rook has a piece to the left, right, top and bottom, then it cannot move at all, unless one of those pieces is an opponent’s piece, in which case the rook can capture - we’ll cover this more in a following section. Knights, on the other hand, can jump over other pieces to its heart’s content. Provided the square it wants to land on is free (or contains an opponent piece to be captured), it can make the move.
Another move that it’s important to talk about is known as castling. This is a special move where you can move 2 pieces on the same turn. Essentially your king and your rook move past each other in one fell swoop. There are two variants of castling. One to the king’s side and the other to the queen’s side. On both sides, the king moves two spaces to the side and the rook ‘jumps’ over him to the square next to him. Let’s see with an example. First, castling on the king’s side. (We’ll leave out all other pieces for the sake of simplicity.)
Before castling on the king’s side:
After castling on the king’s side:
As you can see, the king has moved from e1 two squares to the right to g1 (that’s the king’s side for white, since the king is closer to that rook than the other). The rook, meanwhile, has jumped over it and is now on f1 after staring out at h1.
Now let’s see castling on the queen’s side.
Before castling on the queen’s side:
After castling on the king’s side:
This time the king has moved from e1 two squares to the left to c1 (this is the queen’s side, because the queen is closer to this rook). The rook has this time moved from a1 to d1.
You can find more information about castling in our castling post, which goes into more details about the prerequisites and caveats around castling.
Capturing pieces
You capture (or take) your opponent’s pieces by moving into the square they currently occupy. Once you do so, that piece is captured and removed from the board. All pieces except pawns capture pieces in exactly the same way as they move. All that means is that if a piece is in the square that your queen, rooks, bishops, knights or king can move into, then you can capture that piece.
It should go without saying - but let’s put it in there just for absolute clarity - that you can’t capture your own pieces. This means that if one of your own pieces is in the way of another, then it’s just tough cookies.
Capturing with pawns is another matter, however. Whereas they usually move directly up the board, along the same rank, when they encounter an opponent piece diagonally adjacent square in front of them, they can take that piece. Take the following example.
The pawn is on e5 and there is an opponent pawn on d6. Our pawn can take that pawn on d6 because it is on a diagonally adjacent square in front of our pawn. Of course, the pawn on d6 is also in a position to take our pawn on e5, so if it’s black’s turn in this case, that pawn could take our pawn now.
There is one much more uncommon way for pawns to take and this only occurs in a very specific situation. Consider the following scenario:
Our pawn has advanced to e5 and black has decided that they want to move their pawn on the d file past our pawn on e5. In order to prevent black from doing this, the pawn on e5 can now take the black pawn on d5 en passant (which is French for in passing). In doing so, our pawn on e5 actually moves to d6 and the pawn on d5 is captured. It’s also necessary that this capturing be done on the very next move after the pawn was moved to d5. If white plays another move on that turn, then they have lost the chance to take d5 en passant. This is the only move in chess in which a capture does not require the capturing piece to move onto the same square as the captured piece.
Check
When you move one of your pieces into a position where it can take your opponent’s king, then you are putting your opponent in check. At this point, your opponent is obligated to make a move that removes his king from check - this can be done by moving the king out of harm’s way, by moving another piece in the way to block the offending piece, or indeed by capturing the offending piece.
Checkmate
Checkmate occurs when you put your opponent in check, and they have no legal move to get out of check - it could be that all the possible squares that their king can move to are also being attacked by your pieces, or that his own pieces are blocking his escape to safety, or most likely a combination of both. There are many many ways to result in a checkmate, so let’s take a look at a few below.
This first scenario is a common occurence, especially among beginner players. The king is sitting behind a row of three pawns and an opposing rook comes onto the same rank. There is nowhere for the king to escape to, so this is checkmate.
Of course, there would typically be other pieces on the board, but we’re leaving those off for now as they aren’t relevant. What would be relevant in this scenario is a piece that could come in between the rook and the king, or of course a piece that could capture the rook. Like below:
Here we could move the knight from b3 to c1, blocking the rook and protecting the king. Or, better yet, the bishop on h4 could come down to capture the rook. Because of these pieces, this is no longer a checkmate situation, because white can escape from this check.
This next scenario is another typical checkmate that a beginner player might lose to. This position can often come about after just a handful of moves if you don’t look out for the tell-tale signs.
Here the black queen has moved out on the 2nd or 3rd move (either f6 or h4 would work for this checkmate). After the bishop moved to c6 to cover it, the queen was able to move in to f2 to capture the white pawn that was previously there and to checkmate the white king. The king has no free squares to move to that are out of the path of the queen. On top of that, there are no white pieces that can capture the queen to get out of check. The king would be able to if not for the black bishop protecting the queen.
One way to think about checkmate is that the king is under threat of being caputured and there is no move to make that will prevent him from being captured on the next move. Let’s take a look at one example which has more than one piece attacking the king and the squares around him.
Here there are two black pieces causing the checkmate. The black rook on g8 is placing the king directly in check and the black bishop on f3 is covering the only 2 squares that the king could move to. In this example there are no pieces that could come in between the king and the rook, so indeed black wins here by checkmate.
This next example is slightly more complicated. Let’s take a look.
We also have two black pieces causing this checkmate, but in a different way than last time. The bishop in this example isn’t preventing the king from moving, it’s preventing the white rook from moving down to f1 to block the black rook on a1. If the white rook moved down to f1, it would then be blocking the black rook, but the king would still be in check from the black bishop. This is known as a pin, where a piece is pinned in front of the king to prevent a check. (You can read more about pins in our post about pins which digs deeper into the subject) The king, as we saw in a previous example, is trapped by his pawns and could only move to f2 or h2, both of which of course are being attacked by the black rook. This is therefore checkmate once again.
In this example we’ll look at what happens when kings come up against each each. Remember, the defining characteristic of checkmate is that the king cannot get out of the way of being captured on the next turn, and this also applies to the opponent’s own king. The king, as we saw earlier, can move one square in any direction, including diagonally. This means that the two kings cannot be on adjacent squares. Here’s the next checkmate scenario.
This scenario, or variations of it, is very common, again especially among beginner players who aren’t able to engineer a checkmate situation any earlier in the game.
Here the white king is checkmated by the black queen on a1 since the queen is attacking the entire 1st file and the black king is attacking b4, b5 an b6, which would be the only other squares that the white king could move to in order to escape from the queen. Since it cannot, this is checkmate and black has won the game.
Let’s look at a similar one to the above, but this time using a knight and a bishop.
Here the black king is playing the same role as in the previous example. It blocks off the white king from moving to any square on the 7th rank, which would be either a7 or b7. The bishop is checking the white king and the knight is blocking off the white king’s other escape square, b8.
It’s easy to figure from the previous example, that a king-bishop or king-knight pair alone cannot checkmate the opponent’s king. If, at any time, you’re left with only a single knight or bishop, it means that the best you can hope for it a draw, otherwise known as stalemate. If the opponent is in the same position or is just left with a king, it’s immediately a stalemate as neither player can checkmate their opponent. Of course, if both players are also left only with a king, then it is immediately a stalemate as checkmate is no longer possible.
Stalemate
We’ve just had a glimpse above at what stalemate is. It is just another word for draw. It either means that neither side can win, due to lack of material (i.e. pieces), such as the two kings being the only two pieces left, or when one player can no longer make a legal move on their turn. This usually occurs when few pieces are left on the board and one player’s position prevents their opponent from moving the king legally to any square, since they are all being attacked by the player’s pieces. Let’s take a quick look at one such example.
This situation occurs when all of white’s pieces have been captured and all but one pawn of black’s pieces has been captured. Black here is trying to advance the pawn to the 8th file in order to promote it, but white’s king is in the way. This situation is a stalemate if it’s white’s turn, since the white king cannot capture the pawn, nor can it move to b7, since this is being attacked by the black king, nor can it move to b8, since this is being attacked by the black pawn (remember that pawns take diagonally, meaning they attack squares diagonally in front of them too). Even if it’s now black’s turn, a stalemate is like. If the black king moves to b6 to continue protecting the pawn, then white cannot move on the next turn, the king is still trapped in the corner for the reasons above. If black moves back to a5 or b5 to prevent the stalemate, then white would, or at least should, take the pawn resulting in a stalemate due to lack of material. It’s important to remember this is you’re ever faced with this situation, as putting the king in front of your opponent’s pawn will prevent you from losing the game, which, when you only have a king left, is the best you can do.
If you have any comments, feedback or questions about anything in this post, leave them below.