The rules of chess

The board and how it is set up

Chess is played on a square board of sixty-four smaller squares, eight across and eight down, coloured alternately light and dark. Turn the board so each player has a light square in the near right-hand corner. Two people play: one takes the light men and is called White, the other takes the dark men and is called Black, whatever colour the set is actually made of.

The eight columns running away from you are called files, lettered a to h from White’s left to White’s right. The eight rows running side to side are called ranks, numbered 1 to 8 counting away from White. Every square therefore has a short name: the file letter, then the rank number. White’s near left corner is a1, and the far corner beyond it is h8. A run of same-coloured squares joined corner to corner is a diagonal.

Each player starts with sixteen men: eight pawns and eight pieces. White’s pieces stand on the first rank and White’s pawns fill the second; Black’s pieces stand on the eighth and Black’s pawns fill the seventh. The armies face each other across four empty ranks.

White’s back rank, read from a1 to h1, is rook, knight, bishop, queen, king, bishop, knight, rook. Black’s eighth rank mirrors it, so the black queen stands on d8 and the black king on e8. Each queen therefore starts on a square of her own colour, and the two kings face each other down the e-file.

How each man moves

King

Moves one square in any direction: along a file, a rank or a diagonal. The whole game turns on its safety. A king is never captured and never leaves the board.

Queen

Moves any number of squares in one straight line, along a file, a rank or a diagonal, until something blocks the way. She is the strongest piece on the board, and each side starts with one.

Rook

Moves any number of squares along a file or a rank, never diagonally. Two per side, starting in the corners, and worth roughly five pawns each.

Bishop

Moves any number of squares along a diagonal. Because a diagonal never changes colour, a bishop stays on the colour it began on for the whole game. Each side starts with one on light squares and one on dark, each worth roughly three pawns.

Knight

Moves in an L shape: two squares along a file or rank, then one at right angles. It is the only man that may jump, so the squares it passes over need not be empty. It always lands on the opposite colour to the one it left, and is worth roughly three pawns.

Pawn

Moves straight forward one square, and never backwards. From its own starting rank it may instead go two squares forward. A pawn does not capture the way it moves: it captures one square diagonally forward, and cannot capture straight ahead. It is the unit the others are measured against.

Except for the knight, no man may move through a square another man occupies. To capture, move onto a square holding an enemy man and take that man off the board. You may never capture your own men, and never land on a square one of your own men already holds.

Taking turns, and check

White moves first. After that the players move in turn, one move each. You must move when it is your turn: passing is not allowed.

When an enemy man attacks your king, so that it could take the king next move if nothing were done, the king is in check. Check is not a loss. It is a demand that must be answered at once, and there are only three answers.

1. Move the king to a square no enemy man attacks.
2. Capture the man that is giving check.
3. Put one of your own men between the checking man and your king. This works against a queen, a rook or a bishop, which move along lines. It never works against a knight, and never when the attacker stands right beside the king.

You may never make a move that leaves your own king in check, or that walks it into check. Such a move is not legal. One consequence catches every beginner: a man standing between your king and an enemy queen, rook or bishop may be unable to move at all.

Three moves that break the pattern

Castling moves two of your own men in one turn, and it is the only move that does. The king travels two squares sideways towards one of its rooks, and that rook then hops over the king to the square the king crossed. On the kingside, White plays the king from e1 to g1 and the rook from h1 to f1. On the queenside, the king goes from e1 to c1 and the rook from a1 to d1. Black does the same on the eighth rank.

Castling is only allowed when all of the following are true.

• That king has not moved at any earlier point in the game.
• That rook has not moved at any earlier point in the game.
• Every square between the king and that rook is empty.
• The king is not in check at the moment you castle.
• The square the king crosses and the square it lands on are not attacked by any enemy man.
• The rook itself may be attacked, and on the queenside the rook may pass over an attacked square. Only the king’s three squares matter.

The second odd move is called en passant, French for “in passing”. When a pawn uses its two-square first move and slips past a square an enemy pawn attacks, that enemy pawn may capture it as though it had moved only one square. The capturing pawn steps diagonally onto the skipped square, and the pawn that ran past is taken off. This can only be played on the very next move. Do anything else and the chance is gone for good.

The third is promotion. A pawn reaching the far end of the board must be swapped, at once and as part of the same move, for a queen, rook, bishop or knight of its own colour. The choice is free and has nothing to do with what you have already lost, so a player may end up with two queens. Almost everyone takes the queen; now and then a knight is better, because it attacks squares a queen cannot reach from the same spot.

How a game is won

You win by checkmate. Checkmate is a check with no answer: the king is attacked, and no legal move ends the attack. The game stops there, and the king is never actually captured.

A player may also resign, which is a way of saying the position is lost and there is no reason to play it out. A player whose clock runs out loses too, with one exception described below.

How a game is drawn

Many games have no winner. A drawn game is shared, half a point each. There are six ways it happens.

• Stalemate. The player to move has no legal move but is not in check. This is a draw, not a win, and it rescues more lost games than any other rule.
• Agreement. Both players decide the game is going nowhere and settle for half a point each.
• Threefold repetition. The same position, with the same player to move and the same moves available, has arisen three times.
• The fifty-move rule. Fifty moves by each player have gone by with no capture and no pawn move.
• A dead position. Neither side could deliver checkmate even with the most helpful play imaginable: king against king, or king and one bishop or knight against a lone king.
• A timeout the opponent cannot punish. If your flag falls but the other player has no material that could ever force mate, the game is a draw rather than a loss.

What is different here

Everything above is the game as most people play it. Each rule set below changes something — sometimes a single win condition, sometimes the whole character of the game. Follow any of them for its full rules.

• Standard

  Nothing changes: this is chess exactly as the international Laws of Chess set it out, with the repetition and fifty-move draws claimed for you automatically.

  Full rules

• Chess960

  The back rank is shuffled at random before the game, so opening theory is useless and both players have to think from move one.

  Full rules

• Three-check

  Standard chess with a second way to win: give check three times and the game is yours at once.

  Full rules

• King of the Hill

  Standard chess with a second way to win: march your king into one of the four central squares and the game ends there and then.

  Full rules

• Crazyhouse

  Captured pieces change sides and can be dropped back onto the board, so nothing ever really leaves the game.

  Full rules

• Atomic

  Every capture sets off an explosion that destroys the capturing piece, its victim, and every piece on the eight neighbouring squares.

  Full rules

• Shatranj

  The mediaeval Persian and Arab game: no long-range queen or bishop, no castling, and three separate ways to win.

  Full rules

• Chaturanga

  Historical reconstruction

  A reconstruction of the earliest Indian game, built from shatranj with the disputed points exposed so you can see where the evidence runs out.

  Full rules

Common questions

Can a pawn move backwards?

No. A pawn only ever moves towards the far side of the board, one square at a time, or two on its first move. That is why a pawn push is a decision you cannot take back.

What happens if I have no legal moves but I am not in check?

That is stalemate, and the game is an immediate draw. It does not matter how far ahead the other player is.

Do I have to promote a pawn to a queen?

No. You may choose a rook, a bishop or a knight instead, and you must choose one of the four. Leaving the pawn as a pawn is not an option.

Can I castle out of check?

No. You may not castle while in check, and you may not castle through a square an enemy man attacks. You may castle after having been in check earlier, as long as the king itself never moved.

Sources

Everything on this page is written from scratch. These are the works it leans on, and what each one settles.

• FIDE Laws of Chess, 2023 edition

  The international rule set this site follows for standard chess. It settles the fine points here: the exact conditions on castling, how en passant lapses, and which draws may be claimed.