Chess For Dummies®

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Learn how each type of piece moves. Each player controls 16 pieces: 8 pawns, 2 bishops, 2 knights (little horse heads), 2 rooks (little castle towers), 1 king, and 1 queen. Each type has its own way of moving across the board and potentially capturing your opponent's pieces as it goes. [3] X Research source Once you know the basics of how to play chess, there are hundreds of books and other resources out there to help you discover the deep strategy and near-endless variations possible during games - as well as local tournaments that can help you refine your play and tactics. Pawns are unusual because they move and capture in different ways: they move forward but capture diagonally. Pawns can only move forward one square at a time, except for their very first move where they can move forward two squares.

The origins of chess are not exactly clear, though most believe it evolved from earlier chess-like games played in India almost two thousand years ago. The game of chess we know today has been around since the 15th century where it became popular in Europe. Occasionally chess games do not end with a winner, but with a draw. There are 5 reasons why a chess game may end in a draw: The chessboard is divided into ranks (numbers) and files (letters). This is used as an identifier for when the players move their chess pieces. There are eight of each, and each is comprised of eight squares of equal size: While most people play standard chess rules, some people like to play chess with changes to the rules. These are called "chess variants". Each variant has its own rules:Knowing the rules and basic strategies is only the beginning - there is so much to learn in chess that you can never learn it all in a lifetime! To improve you need to do three things: Take note of the special moves that pawns, rooks, and kings can make. These moves aren't anything you really need to worry about during your first few games, but you want to at least know they exist. As your play advances and you get more comfortable, you'll find that you use them more and more. [4] X Research source If a piece lands on a space with an opponent’s piece, that piece is captured and removed from the board. Pieces cannot be placed on the same square as a piece of the same colour. When a piece captures an opponent’s piece, it must finish its current move action and end the player’s turn. Advanced rules can include specific variants that alter the core rules of the game, along with surrounding requirements often used in tournament settings, such as timing and the touch-move rule - which states that once a piece is touched by a player, it must make a legal move.

The bishop may move as far as it wants, but only diagonally. Each bishop starts on one color (light or dark) and must always stay on that color. The most important thing you can do to get better at chess is to play lots of chess! It doesn't matter if you play at home with friends or family, or play online, you have to play the game a lot to improve. These days it's easy to find a game of chess online! Ranks are rows that go from side to side across the chessboard and are referred to by numbers. Each chessboard has eight ranks, which are numbered from the bottom of the board (where the white pieces start) on up. table with a family member or friend, this hands-on guide is sure to capture your interest (and your opponent's queen), getting you up to speed on the game and its components and giving you the know-how you need to put the principles of play into action from the opening to the endgame. Here's a video of IM Danny Rensch explaining all the rules you need to know to start playing chess.If an opponent’s pawn would have been able to legally capture the moving pawn had it only moved one square instead of two, the opponent can declare en passant on their next turn and move their pawn diagonally onto the square that the pawn passed through - capturing the pawn as if it had only moved one square. This article was co-authored by Vitaly Neimer and by wikiHow staff writer, Jennifer Mueller, JD. Vitaly Neimer is an International Chess Master and Certified Professional Chess Coach with over 15 years of training experience. He has been a part of the United States' Webster SPICE national chess champion team and is also a two-time Israeli national chess champion. Castling is perhaps the most complicated basic rule in chess, and a rule that many beginners often overlook as a result.

At the end of the game, these points don't mean anything—it is simply a system you can use to make decisions while playing, helping you know when to capture, exchange, or make other moves. The only time a pawn may move diagonally is when capturing an opponent’s piece. Pawns may capture an opponent’s piece on either of the diagonal spaces to the left or right ahead of the piece. As part of capturing the piece, the pawn will move diagonally to replace the captured piece. A pawn cannot capture an adjacent piece on any other square, or move diagonally without capturing. There are thousands of potential board layouts from hundreds of openings and variants. | Image credit: Steve Buissinne/Pixabay How to promote a pawn? Now that I have had time to dip into the Dummie book a little, I completely agree with you, Erik. The Idiot's Guide makes me work - and therefore learn. I found myself sliding around and snoozing in the Dummie book. And the organization is terrible.Want to know how to play chess for beginners? Here's a basic rundown on how the rules work. In chess, each player takes turns to make a single move. Players cannot choose to skip a turn - they must move a piece. Each chess piece moves in a specific way, and must be moved according to its legal movement. Over the years, plenty of studies have been carried out looking at the benefits of chess, and researchers have claimed chess may have the ability to help fight off dementia and improve working memory. King Of The Hill: In this format, the goal is to get your king to the center of the board or "top of the hill." The king is the most important chess piece. If you lose the king, you lose the game. But the queen is the most powerful chess piece.

Place the kings next to the queens, which is only fitting. These pieces typically have a tiny cross at their top. A player can also choose to resign, granting their opponent the victory. Matches can also end in an agreed draw - for example, as the result of stalemate leaving a player without any legal moves, or if no player can win using available legal moves, a situation known as a “dead position”. One example of a dead position is when both players are left with their king as their only remaining piece on the board. Notation was invented so that we could analyze chess games after playing them. Thanks to it, we can register the whole game in writing and reproduce it as many times as we want. We must only write down our moves and our opponent's moves correctly. At the beginning of the game the chessboard is laid out so that each player has the white (or light) color square in the bottom right-hand side.

The king is the most important piece, but is one of the weakest. The king can only move one square in any direction - up, down, to the sides, and diagonally.