Chess
Chess hides nothing. Both players see the entire position at all times, which means every loss has an author, and it is always you.
Click a piece to see its legal moves, then click a square. Choose beginner, intermediate or hard from the toolbar.
| Players | 2 |
|---|---|
| Deck | 8×8 board, 32 pieces |
| Play time | 15–40 minutes |
| Difficulty | Unforgiving — one careless move decides games |
How to play Chess
The board is eight by eight, files lettered a to h and ranks numbered 1 to 8, oriented so that a1 is a dark square. White occupies ranks 1 and 2, Black ranks 7 and 8, with pawns on the second and seventh. The back rank runs rook, knight, bishop, queen, king, bishop, knight, rook. White moves first, then players alternate.
How the pieces move
- Rook — any number of squares along a rank or file.
- Bishop — any number of squares diagonally.
- Queen — any number of squares along a rank, file or diagonal.
- Knight — two squares along a rank or file then one perpendicular, an L-shape. The only piece that jumps over others.
- Pawn — one square forward, or two on its first move. It captures only diagonally forward, which is the source of most beginner confusion.
- King — one square in any direction, and never onto a square where it would be attacked.
The three special moves
Castling moves the king two squares towards a rook and the rook to the king's other side, in a single move. It requires that neither piece has moved, the squares between them are empty, and the king is not in check and does not pass through or land on an attacked square.
En passant applies when an enemy pawn advances two squares and lands beside your pawn. On that turn only, you may capture it as though it had moved one square. The right expires immediately.
Promotion happens when a pawn reaches the far rank. It must become a queen, rook, bishop or knight — your choice, and almost always a queen.
Check, checkmate and draws
A king under attack is in check and the player must resolve it — by moving the king, capturing the attacker, or blocking the line. A player with no legal way out of check has been checkmated and loses.
A player who is not in check but has no legal move is stalemated, and the game is a draw. Draws also occur when neither side has enough material to force a mate, when the same position repeats three times, after fifty moves with no capture and no pawn move, or by agreement.
Strategy
Beginners lose games for a very small number of repeated reasons, and each has a straightforward corrective.
Control the centre from move one
A knight on a central square reaches eight squares; the same knight in a corner reaches two. Pushing a central pawn and developing pieces towards the middle gives every piece more to do, and it denies your opponent the same. This is why 1.e4 and 1.d4 have dominated opening play for centuries.
Develop every piece before you move any of them twice
The most common beginner opening is a sequence of moves by one or two pieces while the rest sit at home. Get your knights and bishops out, castle, and connect your rooks. A player with six active pieces beats a player with two active pieces and an exposed queen almost regardless of tactics.
Castle early
The king is safest tucked behind a wall of unmoved pawns, and castling achieves that while activating a rook. Leaving the king in the centre past move ten is the single most reliable way to lose to an attack you did not see coming.
Do not bring the queen out early
The queen is the strongest piece and therefore the easiest to harass. An early queen sortie gets chased by knights and pawns, and every time you move her to safety your opponent develops another piece for free. Trading tempo for nothing is the underlying error.
Before every move, ask what your opponent threatened
This is the discipline that separates a 600-rated player from a 1200-rated one, and it is entirely free. Most games at club level are decided not by deep plans but by a piece left undefended for one move. Look at the move your opponent just made and ask what it attacks, every single time.
Variants
- Chess960 (Fischer Random) — the back-rank pieces are shuffled into one of 960 legal starting positions, which makes memorised opening theory useless.
- Blitz and bullet — the same rules with drastically shortened clocks. Not a variant of the rules so much as a different game psychologically.
- King of the Hill — you win by walking your king to one of the four central squares, as well as by checkmate.
- Three-check — checking the opponent three times wins, regardless of material.
- Shogi and Xiangqi — the Japanese and Chinese members of the same ancestral family, both with captured pieces or river-crossing rules that change the game fundamentally.
Where Chess came from
Chess descends from chaturanga, a four-division military game played in northern India by around the sixth century AD. It travelled to Persia as shatranj — the words "check" and "checkmate" come from the Persian shah (king) and shah mat (the king is helpless) — and reached Europe via the Islamic world and Moorish Spain by about the tenth century.
The modern game is a late-fifteenth-century European reinvention. Two changes did it: the queen, previously a weak piece, was given her sweeping range, and the bishop gained the full diagonal. The result was so much faster and more aggressive that it was called alla rabiosa — "mad chess" — in Italy. The first modern world championship was played in 1886 between Wilhelm Steinitz and Johannes Zukertort, and FIDE has governed international play since 1924. The computing landmark came in 1997, when IBM's Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in a six-game match — the first time a reigning world champion lost to a machine under tournament conditions.
Questions people ask about Chess
- Does this Chess have difficulty levels?
- Yes — three, from a gentle beginner opponent to a genuinely challenging one. Pick from the toolbar before or during a game.
- What is castling and when can I do it?
- A single move in which the king travels two squares towards a rook and the rook hops to the king’s far side. It requires that neither piece has moved, the squares between are empty, and the king is not in check and does not pass through or land on an attacked square.
- What is en passant?
- When an enemy pawn advances two squares and lands next to your pawn, you may capture it on your very next move as though it had only moved one square. The right disappears if you do not use it immediately.
- What is the difference between checkmate and stalemate?
- Checkmate is a win: the king is under attack with no legal escape. Stalemate is a draw: the player has no legal move at all but is not in check. Beginners frequently stalemate an opponent they were about to beat.
- Can a pawn become anything other than a queen?
- Yes — a rook, bishop or knight are all legal choices. Promoting to a knight occasionally avoids a stalemate or delivers an immediate check that a queen cannot, but a queen is right almost every time.
- What is the best first move for a beginner?
- Push a central pawn two squares — e4 or d4 — and then develop your knights and bishops towards the middle. Any move that opens lines for your pieces and fights for the centre is a reasonable opening.