‘White’ gets the first move and the players move their pieces alternatively one at a time except the Castle. The pieces are moves to vacant squares or the squares with the opponent’s pieces, which are taken over and removed from the game. When the king is attacked and confronted by the opponents one or two pieces, the position in known to be in check. The ways to save the situation is by capturing the checking piece of the opponent, bring a piece between the king and the checking piece and moving the king to an empty safe square. Castling or attacking the opponent’s king at this point is not allowed. When a situation comes that the king under the opponent’s attack can’t be removed, the position is known as ‘checkmate’. To ‘checkmate’ the opponent’s king is the ulterior motive of the game. All the pieces move in particular pattern.

The trick is to replace opponent’s pieces by one’s own. The captured piece is removed from the game. A single square can be occupied by a single piece. No piece moves over another except for the knight and castling.

The pawn is allowed to move a single square forward or move diagonally to capture the opponent’s piece. It can move two spaces when it is on the starting square. There is also a special move allowed for the pawn, which is a promotion of the pawn to the rook, queen, knight or bishop if it reaches the back rank of the opponent.

The rook moves forward, backward, left and right to the as many vacant squares it gets along its rows or columns.

The knight moves two vacant spaces forward, backward, left or right and one vacant space perpendicular to it. The move forms the shape of an ‘L’. The knight is allowed to jump over pieces including the opponents during the move.

The bishop moves diagonally to any number of squares that it gets. However, the bishop stays in the same colored square throughout the game.

The queen has the full freedom to move whatever directions it wants. It moves to any vacant rows, columns or diagonally.

The king can move only one square at a time in any direction. It can also go castling in alignment with a rook.

It is the least used move in chess. It occurs when a player moves his pawn two squares as the initial movement. The opponent’s pawn on the immediate next move can capture the pawn while passing the first square and the position would be the same as if the pawn had only moved one square forward and the opposing pawn had captured normally. However, the move has to be the next one or it stands cancelled.

This move was added sometime during the 14th or 15th century to speed up the game at the same time retaining the restrictions imposed by slow movement.

This refers to the transformation of the pawn into any other piece, if it reaches the last square in file. A pawn under such circumstance can promoted to a Queen, a Rook, a Knight or a Bishop. Most of the time the promotion in a game are to a queen as it is considered as the strongest piece on board. This has been termed as queening. Promotion to any other piece is known as underpromotion.

In case of a promotion to a queen, an additional queen piece is used for the game or in absence of an extra queen; an inverted rook is used as a queen.

Castling: It is a defense strategy. This is the only time in the chess game when more than a piece is moved during a single turn. This move is played to move the king to a more secure place and bring the rook into a powerful position. While castling the king is moved two squares from its original position, towards the rook and then moving the rook into the square, which the king has crossed. There are few rules that have to be maintained for castling:

It can only occur when there is no piece between the king and the rook.

• Neither king nor rooks have moved from its original position.
• The king is not in ‘check’ or the square it will be moved isn’t under attack.
• The square that the king is going to pass over is not under attack.
• The king and the chosen rook must be on the same rank.

This move was invented around 1500 with the intention of speeding up the game and help establishing a balance between the defense and the offense.

There is a relative point value to all the pieces on a chessboard except the king. The points are as mentioned below:

• Pawns- 1 Point
• Knights- 3 Points
• Bishops- 3 Points
• Rook- 5 Points
• Queen- 9 Points

It is a situation in a chess game that refers to the loss of a minor piece of a player to his opponent’s major piece that is the rook. The side that gets the rook wins the exchange the other player looses it. The points of the pieces usually determine this exchange and help the players to decide if the exchange is worthwhile, as both players try to win the opponent’s major piece.

One has to be acquainted with the three stages of chess to understand the game properly. These stages are divided into Opening, Middle game and End game consequently. There are 3 separate sets of goals and objectives for these three stages. However, it is not always necessary that these stages and rules have to be followed. This division is generally made for the better understanding of the game and its objectives. These divisions have been created following the style of playing of major chess players, all across the world, over the years.

This is the stage the primary pieces have to be moved rapidly keeping the king well guarded. The objective is to gain dominance over the four squares in the middle of the board. This stage incorporates ten to twenty moves approximately.

This is the stage where attacks are envisaged and the opponent’s weak spots and moves are attacked. The objective of the stage is to get important pieces of the opponent or even checkmate the opponent. The middle game carries on from the end of the opening game and continues till the next 40 moves approximately.

This is the last stage of the game when the remaining important pieces are used to break the remaining defense of the opponent. Strategy is the most important factor of this stage of the game, which is responded by checkmate, or surrender of the game.