Standard rules
The rules as most people learn them.
Setup
Each player has 16 pieces: 1 king, 1 queen, 2 rooks, 2 bishops, 2 knights and 8 pawns. Place the board so each player has a light square in the right-hand corner. Pawns fill the second rank; the back rank runs rook, knight, bishop, queen, king, bishop, knight, rook. The queen starts on her own colour.
Goal
Checkmate the opposing king: attack it so that it has no legal way to escape.
Turns
White moves first. Players alternate, moving exactly one piece per turn.
Movement
- King: one square in any direction.
- Queen: any number of squares in a straight line or diagonal.
- Rook: any number of squares in a straight line.
- Bishop: any number of squares diagonally.
- Knight: an L-shape (two squares one way, one square sideways). It jumps over pieces.
- Pawn: one square forward, or two from its starting square. It captures one square diagonally forward.
Special moves
- Castling: if neither the king nor the rook has moved, and the squares between them are empty and not attacked, the king moves two squares toward the rook and the rook jumps to the other side of it.
- En passant: a pawn that just moved two squares can be captured by an enemy pawn as if it had moved one.
- Promotion: a pawn reaching the far rank becomes a queen, rook, bishop or knight.
Ending the game
- Checkmate wins.
- Stalemate (no legal moves, but not in check) is a draw.
- Players may also agree to a draw.