Learn How To Play Chess The Basics

Chess is one of the most popular games in the world! Find an opponent and try your hand at strategy in a fun and engaging game that anyone can play.

[image1]

Materials
A chess game board and pieces
2 players

The aim of the game

The aim of chess is to be the first player to use your coloured game pieces to capture the other player's king. Use your pieces to capture the king in Checkmate - meaning that any move the opposing king makes will lead it to be captured by a piece from the opposing team. Capture the king, and you win.

Setting up the board

Each player's team consists of 16 pieces:

To begin the game, each player lines their team up on their side of the board as follows:



How to play

Flip a coin to see who takes the white pieces - the player using the white pieces gets to move first.

The player using the white pieces moves one piece first, then the player using the black pieces moves a piece, then the white pieces move, then black, and so on until one player manages to capture the opponent's king in checkmate.

How each piece moves around the board

The King

Although the king is the most important piece on the board, it is also among the weakest, and can only move in a limited fashion.

The king can only move one square at a time, but can move in any direction (down, up, diagonally, left, right). However, the king cannot move itself into check - a position in which it can be captured.

[image4 Possible spaces into which the king can move]

The Queen

The strongest piece on the board, the queen can move most freely out of all the pieces.

The queen can move straight in any direction for as many spaces as possible. If the queen captures a piece during that movement, the queen's turn ends and the opposing piece is captured.

[image6 Possible directions of the queen's movement]

The Bishop

The bishop can move as far as it wants in a diagonal direction, but the bishop's move ends if it captures an opposing piece or it runs into a piece and cannot move any further.

[image9 Possible directions of a bishop's move]

The Rook

Like the bishop, the rook can move as far as it wants, only forward, backwards, and sideways.

[image7 A rook can move forwards and back]

The Knight

The knight moves in L shapes, 3 spaces straight then 1 space to the side.

[image5 Direction of a knight's movement]

The Pawn

A pawn moves 1 space at a time, and can only move froward.

To capture an opposing piece, a pawn captures by moving 1 space forward diagonally.

During the pawn's first move (from its position in the front row at the beginning of the game) each pawn has the option of being able to move ahead 2 spaces.

[image10 The pawn's movement options]

If a pawn reaches the other side of the board safely, it can be promoted to become any other piece on the board and adopt that piece's style of movement. Usually, the pawn is promoted to become an additional queen, but the player can choose which type of piece their pawn becomes.

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