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Subject: Chess Explained
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purpose 24.09.10 - 12:45am
RULES OF CHESS
The rules of chess (also known as the laws of chess) are rules governing the play of the game of chess. While the exact origins of chess are unclear, modern rules first took form during the Middle Ages. The rules continued to be slightly modified until the early 19th century, when they reached essentially their current form. The rules also varied somewhat from place to place. Today Fdration Internationale des checs (FIDE), also known as the World Chess Organization, sets the standard rules, with slight modifications made by some national organizations for their own purposes. There are variations of the rules for fast chess, correspondence chess, online chess, and chess variants.
Chess is a game played by two people on a chessboard, with 32 pieces (16 for each player) of six types. Each type of piece moves in a distinct way. The goal of the game is to checkmate, i.e. to threaten the opponent's king with inevitable capture. Games do not necessarily end with checkmate players often resign if they believe they will lose. In addition, there are several ways that a game can end in a draw.
Besides the basic movement of the pieces, rules also govern the equipment used, the time control, the conduct and ethics of players, accommodations for handicapped players, the recording of moves using chess notation, as well as procedures for irregularities that occur during a game.
Play of the game
Each player has control of one of the two sets of colored pieces and is typically referred to by the nominal color of the player's respective pieces, i.e., White or Black. White moves first and the players alternate moves. Making a move is compulsory; it is not legal to skip a move, even when having to move is detrimental. Play continues until a king is checkmated, a player resigns, or a draw is declared, as explained below. In addition, if the game is being played under a time control players who exceed their time limit lose the game.
The official chess rules do not include a procedure for determining who plays White. Instead, this decision is left open to tournament-specific rules (e.g. a Swiss system tournament or Round-robin tournament) or, in the case of non-competitive play, mutual agreement, in which case some kind of random choice is often employed.
Movement
Each chess piece has its own style of moving. Moves are made to vacant squares except when capturing an opponent's piece.
With the exception of the knight, pieces cannot jump over each other. When a piece is captured (or taken), the attacking piece replaces the enemy piece on its square (en passant being the only exception). The captured piece is thus removed from the game and may not be returned to play for the remainder of the game.[1] The king can be put in check but cannot be captured (see below).
* The king can move exactly one square horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. At most once in every game, each king is allowed to make a special move, known as castling (see below).
* The rook moves any number of vacant squares vertically or horizontally. It also is moved while castling.
* The bishop moves any number of vacant squares in any diagonal direction.
* The queen can move any number of vacant squares diagonally, horizontally, or vertically.
* The knight moves to the nearest square not on the same rank, file, or diagonal. In other words, the knight moves two squares like the rook and then one square perpendicular to that. Its move is not blocked by other pieces, i.e. it leaps to the new square. The knight moves in an L or 7 shape (or either shape inverted) with two steps one direction, a 90 turn, and one step in the new direction.
* s have the most complex rules of movement:
* A can move forward one square, if that square is unoccupied. If it has not yet moved, the has the option of moving two squares forward provided both squares in front of the are unoccupied. A cannot move backward.
* s are the only pieces that capture differently from how they move. They can capture an enemy piece on either of the two spaces adjacent to the space in front of them (i.e., the two squares diagonally in front of them) but cannot move to these spaces if they are vacant.
The is also involved in the two special moves en passant and promotion (Schiller 2003:1719).
Castling
Castling consists of moving the king two squares towards a rook, then placing the rook on the other side of the king, adjacent to it.[2] Castling is only permissible if all of the following conditions hold:
1. The king and rook involved in castling must not have previously moved;
2. There must be no pieces between the king and the rook;
3. The king may not currently be in check, nor may the king pass through or end up in a square that is under attack by an enemy piece (though the rook is permitted to be under attack and to pass over an attacked square);
4. The king and the rook must be on the same rank (Schiller 2003:19).[3]
En Passant
If player A's moves forward two squares and player B has a on its fifth rank on an adjacent file, B's can capture A's as if A's had only moved one square. This capture can only be made on the immediately subsequent move. In this example, if the white moves from a2 to a4, the black on b4 can capture it en passant, ending up on a3.
Promotion
f a advances to its eighth rank, it is then promoted (converted) to a queen, rook, bishop, or knight of the same color, the choice being at the discretion of its player (a queen is usually chosen). The choice is not limited to previously captured pieces. Hence it is theoretically possible for a player to have up to nine queens or up to ten rooks, bishops, or knights if all of their s are promoted. If the desired piece is not available, the player should call the arbiter to provide the piece.
Check
When a player makes a move that threatens the opposing king with capture (not necessarily by the piece that was moved), the king is said to be in check. The definition of check is that one or more opposing pieces could theoretically capture the king on the next move (although the king is never actually captured). If a player's king is in check then the player must make a move that eliminates the threat(s) of capture; a player may never leave their king in check at the end of their move. The possible ways to remove the threat of capture are:
* Move the king to a square where it is not threatened.
* Capture the threatening piece (possibly with the king, if doing so does not put the king in check).
* Place a piece between the king and the opponent's threatening piece. This is impossible if the threatening piece is a knight or , or if a checking queen, rook or bishop is adjacent to the checked king.
In informal games, it is customary to announce check when making a move that puts the opponent's king in check. However, in formal competitions check is rarely announced (Just & Burg 2003:28).
A player may not make any move which places or leaves their king in check, even if the checking piece cannot move due to a pin, i.e. moving it would expose their own king to check. This also means that a player cannot place his king on any square adjacent to the enemy king, because doing so would leave their king able to be taken by the enemy king and therefore in check.
Checkmate
If a player's king is placed in check and there is no legal move that player can make to escape check, then the king is said to be checkmated, the game ends, and that player loses (Schiller 2003:2021). Unlike other pieces, the king is never actually captured or removed from the board because checkmate ends the game (Burgess 2000:457).
The diagram to the right shows a typical checkmate position. The white king is threatened by the black queen; every square to which the king could move is also threatened; it cannot capture the queen, because it would then be threatened by the rook. *
