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Game rules
Chess rules
Chess is a game for two players on an 8 by 8 board. White moves first, players take turns, and the goal is checkmate: an attack on the king that cannot be stopped. Below are all the rules in order, from setting up the pieces to a draw.
How do you set up a chessboard?
Place the board so that each player has a light square in the bottom right corner. The back row holds, in order: rook, knight, bishop, queen, king, bishop, knight and rook. The queen starts on her own colour, so the white queen stands on a light square and the black queen on a dark one. The second row holds eight pawns for each player.
How does each chess piece move?
Every piece has its own way of moving. You capture by moving onto a square held by an opponent's piece, which then leaves the board. You can never capture your own piece.
- King: one square in any direction. It may not move onto a square attacked by the opponent.
- Queen: any number of empty squares across, up and down or diagonally.
- Rook: any number of empty squares across or up and down.
- Bishop: any number of empty squares diagonally, so it stays on one colour for the whole game.
- Knight: in an L shape, two squares one way and one square to the side. It is the only piece that jumps over others.
- Pawn: one square forward, or two from its starting square. It captures differently from how it moves: one square diagonally forward.
What is castling and when is it allowed?
Castling is the only move in which you move two pieces at once: the king moves two squares towards a rook, and the rook jumps over the king to stand right next to it. It is allowed when neither the king nor that rook has moved yet, the squares between them are empty, the king is not in check and it does not pass through or land on an attacked square. Short castling goes towards the nearer rook, long castling towards the farther one.
What are en passant and pawn promotion?
When an opponent's pawn moves two squares from its starting square and lands next to your pawn, you may capture it as if it had moved only one square. This is en passant, and it is only allowed on the very next move; after that the chance is gone.
A pawn that reaches the last row immediately becomes a queen, a rook, a bishop or a knight, whichever you choose. Most players choose a queen because it is the strongest piece, but sometimes a knight gives a checkmate the queen could not.
Check, checkmate and stalemate: how does a chess game end?
Check is an attack on the king. A player in check must get out of it at once: move the king, block the attack with another piece, or capture the attacking piece. You may never make a move that leaves your own king in check.
Checkmate is a check with no defence, and it ends the game with a win for the attacker. Stalemate is when the player to move is not in check but has no legal move: the game is then a draw, even if one side has far more pieces.
When is a chess game a draw?
A game ends in a draw in several cases:
- stalemate, when the player to move has no legal move and is not in check,
- both players agree,
- the same position appears three times with the same player to move,
- fifty moves by each side with no capture and no pawn move,
- not enough pieces left to checkmate, for example king against king.
How should a beginner start a game of chess?
Start in the centre: move the pawns in front of the king and the queen, then bring out the knights and bishops and castle before you attack. Do not bring the queen out too early, because your opponent gains time by chasing it with minor pieces. Before every capture, check how your opponent can answer.
On klyo you can play chess against the computer on eight levels, with a friend by link, or with two people on one device. When you select a piece, the game shows the squares it can move to, and castling, en passant and promotion work exactly as described above.
Play Chess for free
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