The king of board games, with the complete official FIDE rules: castling, en passant, promotion and every kind of draw. Challenge a friend or the computer, from easy to expert level.
Goal: Checkmate the opponent's king: attack it so that it has no way to escape capture.
Chess is played on a board of 8 × 8 light and dark squares, placed so that each player has a light square in the bottom right-hand corner. Files are labelled with the letters a to h and ranks with the numbers 1 to 8.
Each player has 16 pieces: a king, a queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights and eight pawns. White moves first, then the players take turns, one move each. At the start the queen stands on a square of her own colour (the white queen on d1, the black queen on d8).
The king moves one square in any direction. The rook moves along ranks and files, the bishop along diagonals and the queen in all eight directions: any number of squares, but never jumping over other pieces.
The knight jumps in an “L” shape: two squares in one direction, then one to the side. It is the only piece that can jump over others.
You may never move onto a square occupied by one of your own pieces. If an opponent's piece stands there, you capture it and it is removed from the board.
A pawn moves one square straight ahead if that square is empty; from its starting square it may advance two squares instead. It captures diagonally, one square forward. Pawns never move backwards.
En passant: when a pawn advances two squares and lands beside an enemy pawn, that pawn may capture it as if it had moved only one square, by moving diagonally onto the square it skipped. This is only allowed on the very next move.
Promotion: a pawn that reaches the last rank is replaced, as part of the same move, by a queen, rook, bishop or knight of its colour – your choice, usually a queen. It does not matter which pieces are already on the board.
Once per game each player may castle: the king moves two squares towards a rook, and that rook jumps over the king to the square next to it. When castling kingside the king goes to g1 and the rook to f1; when castling queenside the king goes to c1 and the rook to d1. Black does the same on the eighth rank.
Castling is only allowed if neither the king nor that rook has moved yet, there are no pieces between them, and the king is not in check, does not pass through an attacked square and does not land on one. To castle, move your king two squares.
A king attacked by an enemy piece is in check. The player in check must get out of it at once: by moving the king, capturing the checking piece or putting a piece in between. You may never make a move that leaves or puts your own king in check.
If the king is in check and there is no way out, it is checkmate: the game ends and the player who gave mate wins.
The game is drawn in the following cases, which are detected automatically here.
Stalemate: the player to move has no legal move, but their king is not in check.
Insufficient material: neither player can ever checkmate, for example king against king, king and knight against king, king and bishop against king, or only kings and bishops, all standing on squares of the same colour.
Fifty-move rule: each player has made 50 moves in a row without any pawn move and without any capture.
Threefold repetition: the same position occurs for the third time, with the same player to move and the same castling and en passant possibilities.
In games with a clock each player has a time bank (for example 10 minutes) and, with most time controls, gains a few seconds after each of their moves. A player who runs out of time loses, unless the opponent no longer has enough material to checkmate: then the game is a draw.
You may resign at any moment: the game counts as lost.
Fight for the centre with pawns and pieces, bring out your knights and bishops early, castle to keep your king safe and, before every move, ask yourself what your opponent is threatening. Rough values of the pieces: pawn 1, knight and bishop 3, rook 5, queen 9.