Intro to Chess:
The Basics

Learning the fundamentals: the rules of the game. 

Chess: The basics:

Now that you have arrived to the game of chess, it’s time to meet two new friends: the board and its pieces. Before you go anywhere else, let us get you three properly acquainted.

The board:

A chess board consists of 64 squares in an alternating checkerboard pattern between white and black (or whichever two colors suit you best; to avoid ambiguity, these are denoted as the “light” and “dark” squares), and looks like so:

At first, you may notice there are some additions to just the squares. Namely, there are the letters a-h and numbers 1-8 on the edges of the board, denoting different locations. As a result, we can imagine a chess board as a grid.

Across it, we can divide its squares into the following categorizations:

This is a column of the chessboard, consisting of all squares aligned with the same given letter.

Each rank is a row of the chessboard, given by a number. In particular, you may often here the term “back rank,” which refers to the ranks of squares numbered 1 or 8, respectively.

These are squares that consecutively meet just at their corners. Unlike files and ranks, each diagonal may not be of the same length. (For instance, the longest diagonals, from either corner, consist of eight squares, whereas the majority of others are shorter).

Setting Up the Board:

Chess is, essentially, a game of creative battle: each side begins equipped with the same armies of figurines, but must utilize ingenuity, patience, and thoughtfulness to outwit the other. If you wish to test your resolve, or become the next greatest mastermind, look no further. But to do so, and perhaps most importantly, you must first learn how to setup the board. 

A traditional, standard game of chess (as we describe here) consists of two players, each with their own pieces: either white or black, and both starting in the above configuration for a game. 

When setting up the board, make sure that the h1 square is in the bottom-right corner of white’s setup. Also, a useful way to check that the board and pieces are placed properly is to see whether each queen “is on her own color” (i.e., that the black queen is on a dark square and the white queen on a light square). This is especially useful if your board lacks the labelled letters and numbers.

Starting Concepts:

Game Operations:

The player with the white pieces always begins the game. Each player then subsequently takes one turn each, consecutively after the other, where a turn consists of “moving” one piece (or two, in one special case).

"Moving" A Piece:

In chess, we play the game by moving the pieces. Simple enough.

Each time you go to move a piece, you have two options: either move the piece to an available open square, or, more daring, move the piece to a square occupied by an opponent’s piece and remove it from the game: this is known as a “capture.” Also: you cannot capture your own pieces.

If a move is neither a simple move to an available square nor a capture, then you must have achieved the impossible.

Knowing Your Pieces:

1. The Rook:

A mainstay of the game and arguably the most powerful piece, right behind the queen, is the rook, also sometimes known as the “castle.” The rook is a direct yet forceful piece, and both moves and captures in straight lines.

2. The Bishop:

Similar to the rook only instead operating along the diagonals of like-colored squares that it began on, the bishop operates by moving and capturing along the diagonals that emanate from it.

3. The Pawn:

The most plentiful piece both sides begin with is the “pawn,” a furious little friend whose dreams can promote into nearly anything imaginable (that is, as long as it’s another piece). We’ll get to that soon.

Now, unlike all the other pieces on the board, the pawn cannot move backwards. In addition, continuing to try to be the special little guy that it is, and also unlike other pieces, the pawn moves differently depending on whether it is just moving to an empty square or capturing another piece. The guy also has has some other special rules for himself.

Normally, a pawn moves only one square “forward” (i.e., toward the opposing side of the board from your own) at a time; and to capture, a pawn can only take an opponent’s piece if it is on either of the first two squares diagonally in front of it.

Also, if a pawn has not yet moved, then you have a choice between either the normal one-step forward, a potential one-step diagonal capture (as usual), or a special move: moving the pawn two squares forward at once. 

4. The Queen:

Her highness is, hands down, the most powerful piece of the board and of the land. Her reign is mighty, and her moves are omnipresent. Able to move as both a rook and bishop combined (i.e., along any straight line or diagonal of squares from herself), she stands to dominate if given the opportunity.

5. The King:

The King may be the most important piece of the board, but can only move one square in any direction away from himself. Though “the king is the game,” as we often say, he therefore holds little against his fellow monarch.

6. The Knight:

Arguably one of the most confusing pieces is the Knight, but, once mastered, can hold much potential. Able to move only in an L-shape composed of two squares along a row or column from it and then one in another, or vice versa, the Knight is also the only piece that can jump over others.

Knowing Your Pieces:

Though there is no true metric by which the value or importance of one piece can be given relative to another (for it nearly always depends on the particular position), it is often common to give introductory players an idea of the worth of each by associating a theoretical number of points to each. By this guideline (which has no effect on the game, only one’s understanding), we rank the pieces as given just below:

  • The pawn is worth 1 point.
  • A knight is worth 3 points.
  • A bishop is also worth 3 points.
  • A rook is worth 5 points.
  • A queen is worth 9 points.
  • The king "is the game."

Special Moves:

What would be a proper board game without powerup-like moves? Well, here are the three of chess:

  1. En Passant
  2. Castling
  3. Pawn Promotion

 

As mentioned earlier, the pawn may be a seemingly humble fellow, but indeed, he holds in store his own batch of special abilities. Two out of the three above items are reserved just for him, in addition to his already-described singular powers.

1. The En Passant

The en passant is one of those move situations that many beginner chess players may not think is a legal move, but indeed, very much is; and to boot, it is the only capture in the game that is accomplished without moving your piece to the same square as that of the piece you’re capturing.

Here’s how it works: if your pawn is two ranks away from the starting rank of your opponent’s pawns, and your opponent moves a pawn in an adjacent file two squares at once, thus onto the same rank as your pawn, then, if is your turn and the turn directly after the turn on which they performed this move, then you may move your pawn one square diagonally behind their pawn. The opponent’s pawn is captured in the process.

2. Pawn Promotion:

Finally, the last special ability of the pawn (amongst special moves if it is its first move, or it’s capturing, or conducting an en passant, etc.), is pawn promotion. 

When a pawn reaches the back rank that the opponent’s pieces started on, then during the same turn during which it arrived there, you must replace the pawn with another piece. This may be a rook, knight, bishop, or queen: your choice. (Yes, you heard right: another queen).

It is therefore possible, in the game of chess, to have a maximum of nine queens at once (assuming you didn’t lose the queen you began with, and were able to promote all your pawns to such royal majesties). This is, however, quite rare.

3. Castling:

Arguably one of the mainstays behind chess strategy is castling, which is the only move operation during which you may move two pieces in one turn. These two pieces will always be one of your rooks and your king.

Now, castling has some particular conditions of its own:

  • It may only be performed if you have not yet moved your king. (So, if you move your king away from where it began but then back to that square, you are still not allowed to castle).
  • It may only be performed with a rook that has not yet moved.
  • You cannot castle when in check (i.e., you cannot “castle out of check”. More about checking later). 

Castling may be done on one of two “sides,” assuming it is between the king and a rook satisfying the above properties. If it is done on the “king side,” i.e., on the side where the king begins with only two squares between it and a rook, then, to perform a castle, given that there there must also be no other pieces between the king and rook, you move the king two squares toward the rook, and then place the rook on the other side. 

If done on the “queen side” (i.e., on the side where the queen begins between the king and the other rook), then, to perform the castle, assuming there are no pieces between the king and that queenside rook, you move the king two squares toward that rook, followed by placing the rook on the other side.

Starting the Attack:

Now that we’ve laid the groundwork for how your company of pieces operates, let’s get into the actual gameplay: attacking your opponent.

To actually win a game of chess, you must achieve something known as “checkmate.” But, to achieve it, you must first understand what “check” in itself means.

To check or Not to check:

When your king is on the same square that an opponent’s piece would be able to capture to if it was your opponent’s turn, we say that your king is in “check.” When your king finds itself in this unfortunate position, you must get out of check on the following turn. This can be done in one of three ways:

  1. Move your king out of check.
  2. Move a piece into the path of the opponent’s attacking piece, if applicable, to “block” the check.
  3. Capture the opponent’s checking piece, if possible.

In addition, it is illegal to move your king into check. Checking your opponent’s king is therefore a forceful blow, and can be used to keep the opposing king off certain squares.

Winning the game: checkmate:

How to actually win the game, you might ask? Well, if you find yourself in both the unfortunate position of having your king be in check, and you cannot get out of the check, then you have been checkmated, and your opponent has won the game! If, on the other hand, you deliver this to your opponent, then you are the victor.

what if no one wins?

In chess, there are certain circumstances under which no player wins the game. The most forcing of these (in un-timed chess) is known as a “stalemate.” Though it may have the same verbal ending as does “checkmate”, the two are unfortunately quite opposite, and it’d be best not to confuse them. Below we give three ways to achieve a draw in chess, including the stalemate:

Stalemate occurs when it is a player’s turn and they have no legal moves, and they are not in check. For instance, their pieces may be blocked (such as a pawn that cannot move forward due to another in front of it, for example), and their king may have no squares to move to that do not put it into check. When stalemate is reached, the game automatically ends as a draw.

One other way to have a game end in a draw is the so-called “50-Move Rule,” which essentially states that if fifty moves have occurred since the last capture, then one player may claim a draw. 

Additionally, in chess we have what’s called the “3 move rule” (also known as “threefold repetition”), which is that if the same sequence of moves is repeated three times, then either player may claim a draw.

Now, unlike most of the other rules of chess, which outline what must be the case as per the rules of the game, the 50-move and threefold repetition rules are both up to the players to decide. In other words, it is possible to repeat the same move order three times, or perform fifty moves with no captures, and still have no draw, if neither player claims it. If either does, however, then the game ends immediately. 

(Also, in the case of threefold repetition, such claiming cannot occur retroactively).

Summary: Getting Underway:

Congratulations on having officially begun your journey into chess! Having learned the moves, the skills, and what it takes to reach the pinnacle of victory, you now have what it takes to reach the next level: honing your chess strategy.