How to play chess

Updated 1 October 2026

Chess is a game for two players, White and Black, who take turns moving one piece at a time. You win by checkmating the other king: attacking it so that it has no way to escape. White always moves first.

The goal: checkmate

Each side starts with 16 pieces: a king, a queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights and eight pawns. You never actually take the king off the board. When a king is attacked it is in check, and its player must deal with that on their very next move. If there is no way to get out of check, it is checkmate and the game is over.

Capturing pieces helps, because a bigger army makes checkmate easier, but it is not the goal on its own. A player with fewer pieces still wins if they checkmate first.

Setting up the board

The board has 64 squares in eight rows and eight columns. Turn it so that each player has a light square in the bottom-right corner. Rooks go in the corners, knights next to them, then bishops. The queen goes on her own colour (white queen on a light square, black queen on a dark one) and the king takes the last square. Eight pawns fill the row in front.

Every square has a name: a letter for its column (the file, a to h) and a number for its row (the rank, 1 to 8, counted from White's side). That is how we can say “the white king starts on e1”. The step-by-step setup guide has a diagram for each piece.

How the pieces move

Each kind of piece moves in its own way. Only the knight can jump over other pieces; everything else stops when something is in the way. Here is the short version, with a full lesson for each piece:

Worth is in pawns: the usual rough guide for deciding whether a trade is good, not a rule. More inchess piece values.

Try it on the starting position below. Tap any white piece to see where it can go. At the start only the pawns and the knights can move: everything else is boxed in by its own army.

Taking turns and capturing

Players move one piece per turn, alternately. To capture, move your piece onto a square holding one of your opponent's pieces and take that piece off the board. You can't capture your own pieces, and you can't have two pieces on one square. Pawns are the odd ones out: they move straight ahead but capture diagonally.

Check, checkmate and stalemate

A king that is attacked is in check. There are only three ways out: move the king to a safe square, put a piece in the way, or capture the attacking piece. You are never allowed to make a move that leaves your own king in check.

If the king is in check and none of those three things is possible, that is checkmate and the attacker wins. The diagram shows a back-rank mate. If a player is not in check but has no legal move at all, that is stalemate, and the game is a draw. The difference trips up a lot of beginners, so it has its own lesson with a quiz.

Three special moves

• Castling: once per game, the king moves two squares toward a rook and the rook hops over to the other side of it. It tucks the king away and brings the rook into play.
• En passant: a pawn that rushes two squares forward and lands right beside an enemy pawn can be captured as if it had moved only one, but only on the very next move.
• Promotion: a pawn that reaches the far end of the board becomes a queen, rook, bishop or knight. Almost everyone picks a queen.

How a game can end in a draw

Not every game has a winner. A game is drawn when (the full list of endings has the details):

• one player is stalemated (no legal move, not in check);
• the same position appears three times with the same player to move;
• fifty moves in a row by each player pass with no capture and no pawn move;
• neither side has enough pieces left to checkmate, such as king against king, or king and bishop against king;
• both players agree to a draw.

In over-the-board tournaments, repetition and the fifty-move rule have to be claimed by a player; on ChessDays the game ends automatically. A game can also end early when a player resigns, or, if you play with a clock, when someone runs out of time (unless their opponent has too few pieces left to ever checkmate, which makes it a draw).

Your first game

The fastest way to learn is to play. Pip is our gentlest opponent: just learned how the “horsey” moves, gets very excited about captures, and often leaves pieces where you can take them. Three habits will win you a lot of games against Pip and beyond:

1. Before every move, check whether any of your pieces is being attacked.
2. Look for pieces you can capture for free, and for checks.
3. Early on, bring out your knights and bishops toward the centre, then castle to keep your king safe.