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Chess is like a fun battle between two armies, and your mission is to capture the other team’s king while keeping your king safe. Each side has 16 pieces that move in special ways on a board with 64 squares.
Setting Up #
- Make sure the board is right by having a white square at the bottom-right corner.
- Line up your soldiers: place your towers (rooks) in the corners, then come the horses (knights), then the bishops, and in the middle go the king and queen. The queen goes on her own color (white queen on a white square, black queen on a black square), and the king stands next to her. Your eight pawns stand in front, ready to go.
How Pieces Move #
- Pawns walk straight but eat diagonally. They can jump two squares on their first go but only one square after that.
- Rooks (towers) can go straight across rows and up and down columns as far as they want, but not diagonally.
- Knights (horses) make L-shaped moves. They can hop over other pieces, which nobody else can do!
- Bishops glide diagonally across the board as far as they please.
- Queens are the strongest; they can move any number of squares in any direction (straight or diagonal).
- Kings can move one square at a time in any direction. They also have a special move called “castling” where they can hop two squares towards a rook to get into a safer spot.
Special Moves #
- Castling is a team move with your king and rook to protect your king by moving him two squares towards a rook and jumping the rook over the king.
- En passant is a fancy way pawns capture each other. If a pawn tries to sneak by another pawn by moving two squares, the other pawn can capture it as if it only moved one square.
- Promotion means if your pawn bravely makes it to the other side of the board, it can become any piece you want, usually a queen.
Winning #
- You win if you trap the other king so he can’t escape without being captured. That’s called “checkmate.”
- If nobody can win, it’s a draw, like a tie.
Other Important Rules #
- Take turns moving one piece at a time.
- If you touch a piece, you have to move it if you can.
- Keep your king safe, and try to think ahead about what the other player might do.
Chess is a mix of thinking ahead, having fun, and sometimes surprising the other player. The more you play, the better you get, so let’s start playing chess!
