Lesson 1
How the pieces move
Every board on this page is one you can play with. Click any piece and the squares it can go to light up.
Did you know? Chess is about 1,500 years old. It started in India as a game called chaturanga, and the pieces were a real army: chariots (our rooks), war elephants (our bishops), horses (our knights) and foot soldiers (our pawns). The horse's jump is the one move that nobody has changed in all that time.
The set-up
Chess is played by two people. One plays the white pieces, the other plays the black pieces (they are called white and black pieces even if they are a different color), and both armies are exactly the same size: eight pawns, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, a queen and a king.
Turn rule. White always moves first. Then Black moves, then White, then Black, all the way to the end of the game. You may never move twice in a row and you may never move your opponent's pieces. You also cannot pass: when it is your turn, you have to move something.
Your job is to trap the other player's king. That is called checkmate, and Lesson 4 shows you how to do it.
The board and its squares
A chessboard has 64 squares. The columns going up and down are called files
and they are named a to h. The rows going across are called
ranks and they are numbered 1 to 8. Put them
together and every square has its own name, like e4 or g7.
Set-up rule. Turn the board so each player has a white square in the bottom right corner. Then the white queen starts on a white square and the black queen starts on a black square: queen on her own color.
The pawn
Pawns are the little ones and they move straight ahead but capture diagonally. A pawn may never move backwards.
- Normally a pawn moves one square forward.
- On its very first move only, a pawn may go two squares instead.
- A pawn captures by moving one square diagonally forward.
The rook
The rook moves in straight lines: up, down, left or right, as far as it likes. It cannot jump over anything.
The bishop
The bishop moves diagonally, as far as it likes. That leads to something funny. A bishop that starts on a white square can only ever land on white squares. It will never once touch a black square in the whole game.
The knight
The knight moves in an L shape: two squares one way, then one square to the side. It is the only piece that can jump over other pieces.
Easy way to remember. A knight always lands on a square of the opposite color to the one it started on. If you cannot see the jump, look for the nearest squares of the other color that are not next door.
The queen
The queen is a rook and a bishop in one piece: straight lines and diagonals, as far as she likes. She is the strongest piece on the board. That is exactly why you should not send her charging into the enemy army at the start of the game. Everybody will chase her, and every time they chase her they bring out another piece of their own.
The king
The king moves one square in any direction. He is slow, but he matters more than every other piece put together. If your king is attacked and cannot get away, the game is over and you have lost.
The one rule kings cannot break. A king may never step onto a square where it could be captured. That is why some squares stay dark when you click the king on the board below. He is not allowed to walk into trouble.
What is each piece worth?
Nobody adds up points during a real game. The numbers are here to help you work out whether a trade is a good deal. If you give up a knight and win a rook, you have come out ahead.
- Pawn1 point
- Knight3 points
- Bishop3 points
- Rook5 points
- Queen9 points
- Kingthe game
Next up. There are three moves that do not follow the rules above at all: castling, en passant and promotion. They are on the Special Rules page.