Chess For Dummies®

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Once you know the basics of how to play chess, there are hundreds of books and other resources out there to help you discover the deep strategy and near-endless variations possible during games - as well as local tournaments that can help you refine your play and tactics. There are a number of advanced rules that can be used in chess, along with specific openings and board positions known by a variety of names, from the Double King's Pawn Opening to the famous King’s Gambit and Queen’s Gambit. Pawns are unusual because they move and capture in different ways: they move forward but capture diagonally. Pawns can only move forward one square at a time, except for their very first move where they can move forward two squares. Play lots of chess— Just keep playing! Play as much as possible. You should learn from each game – those you win and those you lose. To win at chess, capture your opponent's king by trapping it so that it can't move away from your pieces to safety.

Files are columns that go up and down the chessboard, and, since boards are square, each board also has eight of them. Because numbers indicate ranks, letters indicate files, which are labeled from left to right. The rooks are particularly powerful pieces when they are protecting each other and working together! Put the bishops (pieces that are typically topped with a teardrop shape) on the board next to the knights. Each square has a coordinate and each piece is represented by an initial (N for knight, B for bishop, Q for queen, R for rook, and K for king).

The most important thing you can do to get better at chess is to play lots of chess! It doesn't matter if you play at home with friends or family, or play online, you have to play the game a lot to improve. These days it's easy to find a game of chess online! The bishop may move as far as it wants, but only diagonally. Each bishop starts on one color (light or dark) and must always stay on that color. Pawns: If your opponent moves a pawn 2 spaces on its first move so that it's sitting right next to one of your pawns, you can capture it with your pawn on your next move—but only on your next move. This special ability is known as en passant (French for "in passing").

You can only move one chess piece at a time when it is your turn to move - with one exception! When you castle, you move both the king and the rook in one move.It's never too late to learn how to play chess—the most popular game in the world! Learning the rules of chess is easy: There are thousands of potential board layouts from hundreds of openings and variants. | Image credit: Steve Buissinne/Pixabay How to promote a pawn? Advanced rules can include specific variants that alter the core rules of the game, along with surrounding requirements often used in tournament settings, such as timing and the touch-move rule - which states that once a piece is touched by a player, it must make a legal move. Want to know how to play chess for beginners? Here's a basic rundown on how the rules work. In chess, each player takes turns to make a single move. Players cannot choose to skip a turn - they must move a piece. Each chess piece moves in a specific way, and must be moved according to its legal movement.

The chessboard is divided into ranks (numbers) and files (letters). This is used as an identifier for when the players move their chess pieces. There are eight of each, and each is comprised of eight squares of equal size:A pawn may be promoted to a knight, bishop, rook, or queen. A common misconception is that pawns may only be exchanged for a piece that has been captured. That is NOT true. A pawn is usually promoted to a queen. Only pawns may be promoted. At the beginning of the game the chessboard is laid out so that each player has the white (or light) color square in the bottom right-hand side. This article was co-authored by Vitaly Neimer and by wikiHow staff writer, Jennifer Mueller, JD. Vitaly Neimer is an International Chess Master and Certified Professional Chess Coach with over 15 years of training experience. He has been a part of the United States' Webster SPICE national chess champion team and is also a two-time Israeli national chess champion. Each type of piece moves in its own unique way on the board. Use these different movements to craft your strategy to win. The different chess pieces, from left to right: pawn, rook, knight, bishop, queen, king. | Image credit: Agzam/Pixabay How to move chess pieces