Wizards Chess
The Rules of Chess
Chess is a strategy board game, the goal of which is to hunt down
and checkmate your opponent's king.
Players take turns moving one piece at a time in an effort to attack their opponent's position, and to defend their own.
The chesspieces are idealized representations of a medieval army; each player has at his command two rooks (the castle of ancient times), two knights (the cavalry), two bishops (the powerful Church of the middle ages), a Queen and a King (the monarchy), and eight pawns (the lowly foot soldiers).
In the following pages, we'll learn how to set up a chess board correctly, how to move the pieces, and how to carry out special manoevers like castling, and en passant captures:
How to Set Up a Chess Board
A properly set up chess board looks like this:
From left-to-right the bottom row for White has: rook, knight, bishop, queen, king, bishop, knight, and rook.
However, when sitting at Black's end of the board, the left-to-right order of the pieces is slightly different:
On this side the order is rook, knight, bishop, king, queen,
bishop, knight, rook.
Remember that the board is properly oriented when both players
have a white square on the bottom, right-hand side. This might
not seem important now, but when you become an experienced chess
player a board with a black square on the bottom right will drive
you crazy!
Keep in mind too, that the queen always goes on a square of the same color. White queen on a white square, Black queen on a black square. Another way to remember this is that the Queen always goes on the "d" square (you can see the letters marked on the board, above), and the king on the "e" square.
Okay, now we've got the board ready to go, let's figure out how the pieces do their thing.
How Pawns Move
At the beginning of the game, white's pawns are lined up on the
second rank, and black's are on the seventh:
How the Knight Moves
The knights are easily recognizable as the pieces that look like
horses. At the beginning of the game, they are to be found one
square in from the corners:
While the other pieces slide from one spot to another in straight lines, knights are the only ones that jump from one spot to another. And when they jump, they don't follow a straight line or a diagonal.
It's easiest to use a picture to show how the knight moves. The knight in the image below can hop to any one of the squares with an X on it:
How the Rook Moves
Rooks are the pieces that look like the turrets of a castle. At
the beginning of the game, they are to be found here:
Rooks can move an unlimited number of squares to the right, to the left, straight forward, or straight backward:
How the Bishop Moves
At the beginning of the game, the bishops are to be found here
Bishops can move an unlimited number of squares diagonally. This means that a bishop that starting the game on a dark square will only ever be able to operate on the dark squares. Similarly, a bishop that begins on a light square will never sit upon a black square:
How the Queen Moves
The queens are the large pieces topped with crowns. At the beginning
of the game, the queens are to be found here:
Queens move with the combined power of bishops and rooks. They can move an unlimited number of squares diagonally, plus they can move an unlimited number of squares forward, backward, left or right. This makes the queen the most mobile piece of all:
How the King Moves
The kings are the large pieces topped with crosses. At the beginning
of the game, the kings are here:
Kings can move one square at a time in any direction:
Next lesson, I'll show you the best strategies and a few figures of wizards chess...