Chess Rules

Chess is played by two players, White and Black, with 16 pieces each on an 8x8 board. White moves first, the players alternate, and the game is won by checkmating the opposing king. The rules below follow the FIDE Laws of Chess, the international standard, and note where tournament play adds to them and where our board applies them differently.

If you are new to the game, the how to play chess guide walks through the setup and each piece with diagrams, above a board where you can play Stockfish straight away.

Chess Rules in Eight Steps

1. Set up. Place the board with a light square in each player's near right corner. Rooks go in the corners, then knights, then bishops, the queen on her own colour and the king beside her, with eight pawns in front.
2. Move in turn. White moves first, then the players alternate. Every turn you must make exactly one move; passing is not allowed.
3. Move each piece its own way. King one square; queen, rook, and bishop any distance along open lines; knight in an L, jumping; pawn straight forward, capturing diagonally.
4. Capture. Move onto a square held by an enemy piece to capture it. You can never move onto your own piece.
5. Guard your king. No move may leave or put your own king in check. When you are in check you must end it at once.
6. Use the special moves. Castle once with an unmoved king and rook, capture en passant on the move after a two-square pawn advance, and promote a pawn that reaches the far row.
7. Win. Checkmate the opponent's king, or accept their resignation.
8. Know the draws. Stalemate, a dead position, agreement, threefold repetition, and the fifty-move rule all end the game as a draw.

The Board and the Pieces

The board has 64 squares, 32 light and 32 dark, in eight rows called ranks and eight columns called files. It sits between the players so the corner square on each player's right is light. Files are lettered a to h from White's left and ranks numbered 1 to 8 from White's side, so every square has a name: White's king starts on e1, Black's on e8.

Each player has 16 pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns. White's pieces fill ranks 1 and 2, Black's fill ranks 7 and 8. The queen starts on her own colour, d1 for White and d8 for Black, and the king beside her on the e-file.

The Laws do not say who plays White. Tournaments assign colours; in a friendly game a common method is to hide a pawn of each colour in your fists and let your opponent choose.

How the Pieces Move

• A piece may never move to a square held by a piece of its own colour. Moving onto an enemy piece captures it, and it leaves the board for the rest of the game.
• The queen, rook, and bishop cannot pass through other pieces. Only the knight jumps over them, apart from the rook in castling, which passes the king.
• A pawn is the one piece that captures differently from how it moves, and the one piece that can never move backward. A piece directly in front of a pawn blocks it.
• A move is compulsory: even when every legal move makes your position worse, you must make one.

Castling

Castling is a king move: the king moves two squares toward a rook, and that rook moves to the square the king crossed. Kingside, the king goes e1 to g1 and the rook h1 to f1. Queenside, the king goes e1 to c1 and the rook a1 to d1, three squares. The king always moves exactly two squares.

When you can never castle again

• Once the king has moved, even if it went back to e1.
• With a rook that has moved, even if it went back to its corner.

When you cannot castle this move

• Any piece stands between the king and the rook.
• The king is in check.
• The square the king crosses, or the square it lands on, is attacked by an enemy piece.

For attacks, only the king's path matters. The rook may be attacked, and it may cross an attacked square, which in queenside castling means b1 (or b8) can be under fire. In a game played over the board, move the king first, with one hand: touching the king and then a rook commits you to castle on that side if it is legal.

En Passant

When a pawn advances two squares from its starting square and lands on the square beside an enemy pawn, that enemy pawn may capture it as if it had moved only one square. The capturing pawn moves diagonally to the square that was skipped, and the pawn that advanced is removed.

• Only a pawn can capture en passant, and only a pawn that has just made a two-square advance can be captured this way.
• It must be done on the very next move. Make any other move and the right is gone for good.
• For White, the capturing pawn is always on the fifth rank; for Black, on the fourth. Example: a white pawn on e5, Black plays d7-d5, White answers exd6.
• Like any capture it is optional unless it is the only legal move, and as a pawn move and a capture it restarts the fifty-move count.

Promotion

A pawn that reaches the last rank must be exchanged, as part of the same move, for a queen, rook, bishop, or knight of its own colour. It cannot stay a pawn and cannot become a king. The choice does not depend on which pieces have been captured, so a second queen, or a third knight, is legal. The new piece acts at once: a pawn that promotes on e8 can give check from e8 on that same move.

Players almost always choose a queen; anything else is an underpromotion, chosen for example to avoid stalemate or to use a knight's move. Under FIDE rules an upside-down rook counts as a rook, not a queen. On our board a Promote to box offers all four pieces.

Check, Checkmate, and Resigning

A king is in check when an enemy piece attacks it. You may never make a move that leaves your own king in check or puts it there, and when you are in check you must end it on your next move: move the king, capture the checking piece, or block the line between them. A pinned piece, one that cannot move because that would expose its own king, still gives check. A double check can only be answered by a king move.

Checkmate is check with no legal escape. It ends the game at once, and the king is never captured. A player may also resign at any moment, which loses the game, unless the opponent could not possibly checkmate by any series of legal moves, in which case it is a draw.

Every Way to Draw

Some draws end the game the moment they happen; others must be claimed by the player to move, and become automatic only later.

Perpetual check is not a separate rule: a king chased forever by checks ends up in a threefold repetition, or both players agree the draw. The positions in a repetition count as the same only if the same player is to move and the same moves, including castling and en passant, are possible.

Touch-Move and Tournament Rules

• Touch-move. Deliberately touch one of your own pieces and you must move it, if it has a legal move; touch an enemy piece and you must capture it, if you can. To straighten a piece, say "j'adoube" or "I adjust" first.
• One hand. Each move is made with one hand, and once you let go of a piece on its new square the move stands.
• Illegal moves. In standard tournament games, the position before the illegal move is put back. The first completed illegal move gives the opponent two extra minutes; a second by the same player loses the game, unless the opponent could not checkmate at all.
• Scoring. A win scores 1 point, a draw half a point, and a loss nothing.

Chess Notation

Games are written in algebraic notation: the letter of the piece that moves, then the square it lands on. Moves are numbered in pairs, so 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 means White played e4, Black e5, then White Nf3. The move list beside our board uses exactly these symbols.

How Our Board Applies the Rules

• You play White against Stockfish and always move first. There is no two-player mode and no online play.
• Every legal move is allowed and nothing else: select a piece and dots show where it can go, including the castling square and an en passant capture.
• To castle, click the king and then g1 or c1; the rook moves by itself.
• A pawn that reaches the eighth rank opens a box offering a queen, rook, bishop, or knight.
• Checkmate, stalemate, and dead positions of bare material end the game by themselves. So does the fifty-move rule, at 50 moves each rather than the 75 that makes it automatic in tournaments.
• Repeated positions do not end the game, and there is no draw offer. Resign concedes the game.

Chess Variants

Our board plays standard chess only. These are the variants and relatives you are most likely to meet; the first three use the rules above with one change.

Chess960 (Fischer Random)

The pieces on the back rank start in one of 960 shuffled arrangements, the same for both sides, with the king between the rooks and the bishops on opposite colours. Pawns and every other rule stay the same. Bobby Fischer introduced it in 1996, and the FIDE Laws include rules for it. The Freestyle Chess tour plays it under its own trademarked name.

Rapid chess

Standard rules with a clock: more than 10 and less than 60 minutes for each player, counting any increment over 60 moves.

Blitz chess

Standard rules with 10 minutes or less for each player, counting any increment the same way.

Xiangqi (Chinese chess)

A separate game believed to come from the same Indian ancestor, chaturanga. The pieces stand on the points where lines cross, not inside squares.

Shogi (Japanese chess)

Another relative from the chaturanga family. Captured pieces can be dropped back onto the board by the player who took them.

Chess Glossary

Back rank

A player's first rank, where the pieces start: rank 1 for White and rank 8 for Black. A back-rank mate traps a king behind its own pawns there.

Bishop pair

Having both bishops, one on each square colour. In open positions two bishops are usually rated above bishop and knight or two knights.

Blunder

A very bad move, such as leaving the queen where it can be taken. Written ?? in annotation.

Castling

The king moves two squares toward an unmoved rook, and the rook moves to the square the king crossed, as one move. See castling above.

Check

An attack on the king. The player in check must end it on the next move.

Checkmate

Check with no legal way out. It ends the game, and the side giving it wins.

Dead position

A position where neither side can checkmate by any series of legal moves, such as king against king. The game is drawn at once.

Development

Moving the knights and bishops off their starting squares to squares where they take part in the game.

Discovered attack

Moving one piece out of the way so that another piece behind it attacks. If the attack is on the king, it is a discovered check.

Double check

Check from two pieces at once. Only a king move can answer it.

En passant

A pawn capture of an enemy pawn that has just advanced two squares past it, made as if the pawn had moved one square. Allowed only on the very next move.

En prise

Left where it can be captured for nothing or for less than it is worth. Also called hanging.

Exchange

A trade of pieces, usually of equal value. "Winning the exchange" means winning a rook for a bishop or knight.

Fianchetto

Developing a bishop to the long diagonal on the knight file, b2 or g2 for White, b7 or g7 for Black, after moving the pawn in front of it one square.

File

A column of the board, lettered a to h from White's left.

Fork

One piece attacking two or more enemy pieces at the same time. Made with a knight, it is called a knight fork.

Gambit

An opening in which a player gives up material, usually a pawn, for faster development or space.

J'adoube

French for "I adjust". Said before straightening a piece on its square, so that touching it does not oblige you to move it.

Major piece

A queen or rook. With its own king helping, either can checkmate a lone king; a bishop or knight alone cannot.

Minor piece

A bishop or knight.

Opposition

Two kings on the same line with one square between them. In pawn endings, the side that has to move may have to give way.

Passed pawn

A pawn with no enemy pawn ahead of it on its own file or on either file beside it, so no pawn can stop it promoting.

Pin

An attack on a piece that cannot move, because the king is behind it, or should not move, because a more valuable piece is.

Promotion

Exchanging a pawn that reaches the far rank for a queen, rook, bishop, or knight of the same colour, as part of the same move.

Rank

A row of the board, numbered 1 to 8 from White's side.

Skewer

An attack on a valuable piece that must move out of the way, leaving a less valuable piece behind it to be taken.

Stalemate

The player to move has no legal move and is not in check. The game is drawn at once.

Tempo

A unit of time equal to one move. You gain a tempo when your opponent has to spend a move, for example moving the same piece twice.

Touch-move

The tournament rule that a piece you deliberately touch must be moved, and an enemy piece you deliberately touch must be captured, if that is legal.

Underpromotion

Promoting a pawn to a rook, bishop, or knight instead of a queen.

Zugzwang

German for "compulsion to move". A position where any move you make weakens it, most often seen in endgames.