Chess rules for beginners: pieces, moves and checkmate

The board and the starting position

The board has 64 light and dark squares, turned so that each player has a light square in the bottom-right corner. Your back rank goes: rook, knight, bishop, queen, king, bishop, knight, rook. The eight pawns fill the rank in front.

Remember the queen by colour: the white queen starts on a light square, the black queen on a dark one. Swapping king and queen is the single most common setup mistake.

How each piece moves

A piece captures by moving onto an occupied square and removing that piece from the board. Nothing may move through another piece except the knight.

• King: one square in any direction, and never onto a square attacked by an enemy piece.
• Queen: any number of squares in a straight or diagonal line, as long as nothing blocks the way. The strongest piece.
• Rook: any number of squares along a rank or file.
• Bishop: any number of squares diagonally. Each side has one light-squared and one dark-squared bishop, and neither ever changes colour.
• Knight: an L shape — two squares one way, then one square at a right angle. The only piece that jumps over others.
• Pawn: one square forward, or two on its own first move. Pawns capture one square diagonally forward, never straight ahead.

The three special moves

Castling is the only move that shifts two pieces at once: the king steps two squares toward a rook and that rook hops to the far side of the king. It is legal only if neither piece has moved before, the squares between them are empty, the king is not in check, and the king neither passes through nor lands on an attacked square.

Promotion: a pawn reaching the far rank must immediately become a queen, rook, bishop or knight — the player chooses, a queen is not compulsory, and having two or more queens on the board is perfectly legal.

En passant: if an enemy pawn uses its two-square first move to land beside your pawn, you may capture it as though it had moved only one square. The right expires immediately — it is available on the very next move or not at all.

Check, checkmate and losing

A king under attack is in check, and the player must get out of it on the very next move in one of three ways: move the king to a safe square, capture the attacking piece, or block the line with another piece.

Checkmate is a check with no legal escape. The game ends there — the king is never actually captured. A player can also resign, or lose on time in a game with a clock.

The six ways a game is drawn

• Stalemate — the side to move has no legal move and is not in check. The game is drawn even if the other side is a queen up.
• Both players agree to a draw.
• Insufficient material: neither side has enough left to force mate, for example king versus king, or king and knight versus king.
• Threefold repetition: the same position occurs three times with the same player to move and the same castling and en-passant rights.
• The fifty-move rule: fifty consecutive moves by each player with no capture and no pawn move.
• A player runs out of time but the opponent has no material that could ever deliver mate.

Competition rules worth knowing

Touch-move: touch one of your pieces and you must move it if a legal move exists; touch an enemy piece and you must capture it if you legally can. Say so out loud before straightening a piece.

With a clock, press it with the same hand that moved the piece. Online games on Chesslizar handle the clock for you, and add the increment automatically when you pick a time control with one.