Chess

Players and equipment

Two players and a board of sixty-four squares, laid so each player has a light square at their right hand. Sixteen pieces each: a king, a queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights and eight pawns. A clock as well, if you are playing to a time limit. SquareScores keeps the match table: each game is one match, a win is a tap on the winner's name, and a drawn game is a match closed with nobody tapped.

The deal

Each player fills the two ranks nearest them. Rooks in the corners, then knights, then bishops, then the queen on her own colour with the king beside her, and the eight pawns across the rank in front. Her own colour means the white queen starts on a light square and the black queen on a dark one, so the two queens face each other. White moves first, and the usual courtesy is to swap colours for the next game.

Play

You move one piece per turn. A piece takes by moving onto an occupied square and lifting the enemy piece off. Only the knight passes over anything in its way.

King

One square in any direction

Queen

Any distance along a rank, a file or a diagonal

Rook

Any distance along a rank or a file

Bishop

Any distance along a diagonal

Knight

Two squares one way and one square the other

Pawn

One square forward, or two from its starting square, and takes one square diagonally

A rank is a row across the board, a file a column towards your opponent, a diagonal a line of squares corner to corner. The pawn alone moves one way and takes another, and it never moves backwards.

The three that catch people out

Castling

Only if neither has moved, the squares between are empty, and the king is not in check nor crossing an attacked square

The king moves two squares toward a rook and the rook hops to his other side

En passant

On the very next move only

A pawn that has just gone two squares past an enemy pawn may be taken as if it had gone one

Promotion

Nearly always a queen

A pawn reaching the far rank becomes any piece except a king

Your king may never be left under attack. An attack on the king is called check. If he is in check you must answer it that move — move him, take the attacker, or put something in the way — and a move that would expose him is not a legal move at all. Saying check is a courtesy, not a rule.

Scoring

There is no running score to keep here. A game is won or it is not, so tap the winner when it ends. A drawn game is closed with nobody tapped and shows as a game played that nobody won. Over a series the standing is simply games won, and a draw moves nobody.

A worked match

Alice and Ben play five games and record each on the match table as it ends.

Game 1

Alice

Alice traps Ben's king in the middle of the board with her queen and a knight

Game 2

Nobody

Ben is left with a lone king that has no move and is not in check: stalemate

Game 3

Ben

Alice loses her queen to a knight attacking two pieces at once, and resigns

Game 4

Nobody

Down to a king and a bishop each, the two agree a draw

Game 5

Ben

Ben mates a bare king with his king and rook on the edge of the board

After game 1 Alice taps her own name, the game files and the next row opens. Game 2 is closed with nobody tapped and stands as played and drawn; Ben is tapped in game 3, nobody in game 4, Ben in game 5. The table reads Ben 2, Alice 1; the two drawn games stand in the list with nobody's name on them and count for neither. A mis-tap on the last game can be taken back until the next one has something in it.

Ending

Checkmate ends it: the king is attacked and no legal move saves him. A player may also resign, which counts the same for the other side, or lose on time where a clock is running.

A game can end with nobody winning — stalemate, where the player to move has no legal move and is not in check, or a draw agreed, by threefold repetition, by the fifty-move rule, or with neither side holding enough material to mate. End the match without tapping anybody and it stands as a game played that nobody won.

Get your pieces out

At the start almost nothing can move except the pawns and the knights, and a piece on its home square is doing no work. Spend your first moves bringing the knights and bishops out to squares where they see plenty of the board, and move a pawn only when it opens a line for one of them. The queen is the strongest piece and the worst to bring out early: she is chased around by pawns and knights worth a third of her. Rooks come last, once there is an open file for them to look down.

Fight for the middle

A piece in the middle reaches more squares than the same piece on the edge: a knight in the centre has eight moves, a knight in the corner has two. The four squares at the very centre are the ones both sides want, so put a pawn or two on them early, back them up, and plant a knight where no pawn can push it away.

Keep the king safe

Castle early, usually within the first ten moves, and then leave the three pawns in front of the king where they are. Every pawn you push from in front of him is a door you have opened, and an attack down an open line towards the king is how most games between beginners are lost. Before every move ask two questions: what is my opponent attacking, and what did their last move make possible.

Do not give pieces away for nothing

A rough count helps you judge a swap: a pawn is worth one, a knight or a bishop about three, a rook five and the queen nine. Never take a piece without checking what takes back, and never move to a square without checking what attacks it there. When you are ahead, swap pieces freely, because the fewer left the more your extra one matters; when you are behind, keep the board crowded and look for complications.

The basic endgame

Once most of the pieces are gone the king stops hiding and becomes a fighting piece: bring him to the middle and use him to escort a pawn to the far rank, where it becomes a queen. With a queen or a rook against a bare king, do not chase him with checks. Use your own king to take the squares he wants, and use the rook or queen to cut off a rank so he has less and less room, until he is on the edge and you can check him there with your king guarding the escape squares.

Chess960

Also called Fischer Random. The pawns start where they always do, but the eight pieces behind them are shuffled, the same shuffle for both sides, with the bishops on opposite colours and the king somewhere between the rooks. Everything else is ordinary chess, castling included: the king and rook end up on the squares they would in a normal game, however far each travels to get there.

Blitz and rapid

Ordinary chess against a clock. Each player has a fixed time for all their moves, and a player whose time runs out loses, unless the other side has too little left to mate, which is a draw. Rapid is roughly fifteen minutes to an hour each; blitz is ten minutes or under, five minutes each being the usual game. Many clocks add a few seconds after every move, called an increment, which stops a won game being lost on the clock.

Three-check

Give check three times and you win. Checkmate still wins as usual, so the king needs far more attention than the pieces around him.

King of the hill

Walk your king onto any of the four centre squares and you win at once, as well as by ordinary checkmate. Kings that spend a normal game hiding come out into the middle.

How does castling work in chess?

It is one move that puts the king somewhere safer and brings a rook into play. The king moves two squares towards a rook that has not yet moved, and the rook jumps over him to the square beside him. You may castle only if neither the king nor that rook has moved, every square between them is empty, the king is not in check, and the king does not pass over or land on a square an enemy piece attacks.

What is en passant in chess?

A pawn that moves two squares on its first move may not simply skip past an enemy pawn standing beside where it lands. If your pawn has advanced three ranks and an enemy pawn moves two squares to land right beside it, you may take that pawn as if it had moved only one square, by moving your pawn diagonally forward to the square it passed over. You may do this only on the very next move.

What is the difference between stalemate and checkmate?

Both are positions where the player to move has no legal move. In checkmate the king is in check, and the game is lost. In stalemate the king is not in check, and the game is a draw. That is why a player far ahead has to take care in the endgame: hemming in a lone king so tightly that he cannot move, without actually giving check, throws away the win.

What happens when a pawn reaches the other side of the board?

It is promoted, on the same move, to a queen, a rook, a bishop or a knight of its owner's choice. It cannot stay a pawn and cannot become a king. Nearly everyone chooses a queen, so you can have two or more queens at once. A knight is occasionally the right choice, because a knight can give a check the queen cannot.

Can the king take a piece in chess?

Yes. The king takes like any other piece, one square in any direction, so long as the square he takes on is not attacked by an enemy piece. He may never move into check, which is also why two kings can never stand next to each other.

Who goes first in chess?

White always moves first. In a series the colours swap every game, so each player has White the same number of times.