Here is a piece value chart. It is a handy chart to look at to remember what each piece is called. It is also helpful to remember what each piece is worth when you’re making trades with your opponent.
Next, look at this chart for piece movement. Notice that each piece has a unique way of moving. The pawn is the only piece that captures differently from how it moves, so where you see the dots is where the pawn captures and the X is where it can move. The pawn is also the only piece that cannot move backwards, but if it gets to the last rank then it can promote into a queen! More on promotion later.
Next up is the special castling move. To castle you have to remember a few rules; The king and rook have to both be on their original square, having not yet moved in the game. Also, your king cannot be in check (attack from your opponent), or move through a square that would be check, or end up in check.
Speaking of check, this is the most important concept in chess. If your king is attacked then we call that check, and there are three ways to get out of check, which you can remember as the ABCs:
A) Run (A)way from check to a safe square
B) (B)lock the attack so your king is no longer in check
C) (C)apture the piece putting your king in check
When you’re in check and you can’t do one of these three things then that’s checkmate and you lose.
Another important rule is promotion. It works like this: if you get one of your pawns to the last row (8th rank for white, 1st rank for black), then you get to promote it to a new piece. The new piece starts on the square where the pawn landed, and can be any piece you choose from the following list: Knight, Bishop, Rook, Queen. Most chess players choose to promote pawns into queens, because they are the most powerful piece!
Ok, the last rule for movement is a special one that happens only rarely in chess. It’s called en passant (which is a french phrase meaning “in passing”), and it works like this: when your pawn is advanced to the 5th row from your back row (5th rank for white or 4th rank for black) then you can capture your opponent’s pawn if it moves 2 squares ahead and lands next to your pawn. However, you can only make this capture on the first chance you get. If you choose to move another piece on that turn then you cannot come back to the pawn later to make the capture. Here’s a diagram showing en passant:
That’s plenty of information to start playing. I strongly recommend when you are learning chess that you find someone who already knows the rules to play with. You can even play against computers on an app or website. You can also contact an online tutor to play with, such as myself, by going to my website at ChessWithJoshMoss.com. For myself, I use chess.com for all my chess-playing needs, but there are several other good websites out there, including chess24.com, lichess.org, and many others. Pick one and play! Happy chess playing everyone!
