Chess Rules

Chess is a strategic two-player board game played on an 8x8 grid, where each player commands an army of 16 pieces with distinct abilities

Objective: The objective of chess is to checkmate your opponent's king, meaning the king is in a position to be captured ("in check") with no legal moves to escape. You do this by capturing pieces of your opponents and cornering the king

Setup:

2 player game
Each player sets up the chessboard having a light-colored square at their right-hand corner
Each player has 16 pieces, including one king, one queen, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, and eight pawns
White always moves first to start the game
See below for a picture of how an initial board should be set up
- Rooks are castle looking pieces
- Knights are horse looking pieces
- Bishops are pieces with a slit on the top
- Queens have a crown
- Kings is the piece with the cross on the head
- Pawns are the shortest and have a bulb on the top

Instructions

Piece movement

Understanding movements of pieces and how pieces capture

Queens move/captures vertically, horizontally, or diagonally any number of squares
Rooks move/captures vertically or horizontally any number of squares
Bishops move/captures diagonally any number of squares
Knights move/captures in an L-shape - two squares in one direction and then one square perpendicular to the first two. This is the only piece that can jump over pieces
Kings move/captures one square in any direction.
Pawns move forward one square but captures pieces diagonally. On their first move, pawns have the option to move forward two squares.

Pieces cannot move over other pieces except for the knight

Special movement

Castling: A king can castle with a rook if neither has moved before, there are no pieces between them, and the king is not in check. See below for an image of what happens during a castle

En passant: A pawn can capture another pawn that has moved two squares forward from its starting position. Your pawn must be adjacent to the pawn it is trying to capture and your pawn will capture diagonally. See below for an image of what happens during an En passant

Promotion: If a pawn moves from the starting point of your side to your opponents last row without being captured, the pawn can be promoted and become a queen - thus having the ability to move/capture like a queen

Check

A king is in "check" if it is under threat of capture. The player must make a move to remove the threat (either block it or move the king)

Checkmate

Checkmate occurs when a player's king is in check, and there is no legal move to escape. The game ends, and the player in checkmate loses.

Game is won here

Stalemate / Draw

Stalemate occurs when a player has no legal moves, and their king is not in check. The game is a draw.

Other draw scenarios include insufficient material to checkmate

Basic rules to start

White always goes first
Players take turns making one move at a time, and the game requires both tactical and positional thinking
Your first movement will either be moving a pawn (piece that is in the front of all other pieces, therefore block others movement) or a knight (only piece that can jump over others)
Your goal is to checkmate the opponent's king while capturing pieces along the way

Chess is a game of skill and strategy, and understanding the movement of each piece is crucial.

Have fun! :)