Chess Instructions
Online Chess Instructions
The History of Chess
The origin of Chess has been the subject of innumerable legends and fanciful histories. The earliest description of a game unmistakably Chess comes from the 8th century- not from an Egyptian papyrus of 4000 BC, as was once asserted. There is little doubt, however that Chess developed from simpler board games of remote times. It probably developed in India, whence it spread to Persia and Arabia and entered Europe through Spain and Italy. The present form of the game as now played in most of the world was reached about 400 years ago. From India the game also spread eastward and in Japan developed a form markedly different from the Western game.
Playing Chess
Players: Chess is plated by two, on a board with pieces of a special design. The pieces are made in two colors, the darker being used by the player "Black" and the lighter by "White."
The Board: The board is a large square of 8 x 8 smaller squares, which are colored alternately dark and light. The board is so placed that each player finds a light square in the corner at his right. In printed diagrams, the bottom edge by custom represents the White side, the top edge, the Black.
The Pieces: Each player has 16 pieces of his own color. To begin a game, they are placed on the board as shown in many pictures. The pieces on each side are: eight pawns, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, one queen, and one king.
Powers of the Pieces: There are six different kinds of pieces, and each kind has powers peculiar to itself.
The King: The King is invariably the tallest piece of the set. It moves one square at a time, in any direction, on the rank (sideways), on the file (forward or backward), or on the diagonal. Of course, it may not move on a square attacked on by an adverse piece. The two kings can never stand on adjacent squares.
The Queen: The Queen is the second tallest piece. It wears a crown with points, as in the printed symbol. It is the most powerful piece, being able to move in any direction (on a line of adjacent squares) and any distance so long as no obstructions intervene. Another way of saying it is that the queen combines the powers of the rook and the bishop.
The Rook: The rook is a cylindrical tower with a castellated top. It may move any distance along an unobstructed rank or file (forward, backwards, or sideways).
The Bishop: The bishop is topped by a miter, usually marked with a cleft. It moves along diagonal lines only, any distance along an unobstructed line.
The Knight: The knight has the head of a horse, and is often colloquially called a "horse." Unlike all other pieces, it moves not on a line, but from point to point. Consequently it cannot be obstructed by any intervening pieces. Its move has been described as "from one corner to the corner diagonally opposite of a rectangle three squares by two."
The Pawn: The Pawn is invariably the shortest piece on the board. It moves only forward on the file, away from the owner's side of the board. For its first move only it has the choice of going one square or jumping two squares. After it has left its initial square, it may go only one square at a time.
CAPTURING: All pieces except the pawn capture in the same way as they move. If an adverse piece stands on a square that a king, queen, rook, bishop, or knight can move to, the move captures it. The captured piece is taken by its captor.
The pawn alone has a different mode of capture. It does not attack a piece standing ahead of it on the file; consequently it can be blocked without the power of fighting back. The pawn captures diagonally, on the square adjacent and forward. This it attacks at most two squares, and if it is at the side of the board it attacks only one.
The pawn has another peculiarity, the capture en passant (in passing). Suppose a white pawn is advanced from its initial square by a double jump and a black pawn stands on an adjacent file, from which it would have attacked the white pawn had it moved one square only. The black pawn may make the capture, moving to the square jumped over the white pawn.
The object in allowing this en passant capture is to preserve the principle that an advancing pawn stands to meet attack from the adverse pawns standing on both adjacent files. But if the en passant capture is not made at once, in response to the double jump, it may not be made at all.
THE PLAY: White always makes the fist move, and thereafter the players move alternately. The object of play is capture of the adverse king. The capture is never actually made. If the king is attacked, and there is no way of escape, it is said to be checkmated and the game ends. On attacking the adverse king, a player customarily warns "check" Contrary to popular impression; the laws of Chess do not require this warning. However, if a player overlooks that he is checked and makes a move that does not avert the attack, he must simply retract his move and parry the attack.
The great majority of games end before a checkmate, one player resigning because convinced that he must eventually lose. A game may be drawn under circumstances detailed under "Drawn Games" later in these instructions.
CASTLING: Castling is a move that can be made, if at all, only once by each player in a game. It is actually a move of two pieces at once, the king and one rook. The move is legal only if both pieces stand on their original squares and neither has moved previously, if the two or three squares between king and rook are vacant, if the king is not in check, and if the two squares the king must cross are not guarded by the enemy. Castling consists in moving the king two squares toward the rook, and then plaing the rook on the square jumped over by the king.
The purpose of castling is usually twofold: (a) to remove the king to a gavel of greater security (behind unmoved pawns) or (b) to "connect the rooks" and bring them to central files that have been partially or wholly cleared by pawn advances.
QUEENING: If a pawn reaches the other side of the board farthest from its starting point, it is removed from the board and the owner may substitute for it a queen, rook, bishop, or knight. The usual choice is a queen, the most powerful piece. Hence the exchange is usually called queening. It is legal to queen a pawn even if the owner already has a queen on the board (or any other piece that he chooses). Games with more than two queens are rare, but there have been as many as five.
The impoerance of the queening rule is that at maintains fight in many positions that otherwise would have to be abandoned as drawn. Many times, so many pieces are "swapped off" that those remaining on the board are insufficient to force checkmate. The focus of battle then becomes the effort ro force a pawn through the eighth rank and so obtain a new queen.
DRAWN GAMES: A game may be drawn under any of the following circumstances:
Lack of Force: The pieces left on the board are too weak to force checkmate
Perpetual Check: One player shows that he can check the adverse king without cessation.
Stalemate: The player in turn to move can make no legal move, yet his king is not in check.
Repetition: The same position (of all pieces, White and Black) recurs three times in a game, with the same player to move each time. On the third occasion, this player may claim a draw.
Fifty-Move Rule: Either player may claim a draw if during fifty moves by one player on pawn has been moved and no capture has been made, unless his opponent can demonstrate a forced win. (This is the actual effect of a rather complicated clause in the laws of Chess.)
Agreement: The players may agree to a draw. (In tournament plat, not before the thirteenth move.)
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