What Exactly Is Chess?

Chess is a strategic game in which two armies of equal number of soldiers do battle. You must strategically place your men in sectors of the playing field, the board, in order to destroy the man in charge so that the rest of the army cannot be instructed. In this case, the leader is the king. The object is to make it impossible for the king to flee anywhere so that your army can destroy him. This is called checkmate . Checkmate is discussed in detail later on. For those who are curious, follow the link above. Chess is one of the most complicated board games that I have ever played and I'm sure you'll find the same. It requires a great deal of knowledge. It is one of those "Easy to learn, impossible to master" type of games. It goes way beyond learning how the pieces move and can become very confusing if not read carefully or is not described properly. This is why chess has more literature written on it than any other board game, for players of all skills.

Make Sure You Have These Items Before Playing

Chess requires very few things to play. All you need is a board, just like the one that is used to play checkers. 8 x 8, 64 squares.

If you don't have a chess or checkerboard, you can easily make one from paper or on any draw program.

Some other things that you may want to know about the board and its properties:

The board is composed of 32 squares of a light colour, such as a beige or white. The other 32 are of a contrasting colour, usually black. The vertical rows of the chess board are known as files. The horizontal rows of a chess board are known as ranks The diagonal rows of a chess board are known as (please bear with me, this part is extremely difficult) diagonals (Pretty hard, eh?). You will also need a chess set. These cannot easily be made as they are quite intricate so it is a good idea to buy them. They aren't really that expensive; you can usually pick a plastic set up for around $10.00 Canadian, but you can spend up to $200.00 Canadian for a hand-crafted set. There is no limit on the price you can spend.

Another, optional thing that you may want to buy as you begin to play chess more, if you continue that far, is a chess clock. A chess clock is really two clocks that are connected together. It has two push buttons on top which, when one is depressed, the other button is pushed up and causes that clock to begin ticking. After it is pressed, the other button pops up and begins ticking, and so on. The clock was created so that those playing are not allowed to take forever to think. This limits a person's time and makes the game much shorter as well as more interesting because if your clock runs out, you lose the game! There are also many different forms of timing which we will discuss later. Chess clocks, however, will burn a hole in your pocket, a pretty big one at that. Chess clocks run for about $70.00 Canadian to $120.00 Canadian for a classical wind-up style. You can also pick up a digital display clock, which although are more expensive, keep the time very exact (which we'll discuss at a later time) and are easy to use. You may find some from Ebay at the top of this page

A chess clock, however, is not needed just yet. I suggest learning the game and playing for a while before you begin to time your games. It just makes everything a lot more confusing. Take as much time as you need and learn as much as possible from your first games.

That will be everything you need to play. As mentioned, you do not need a number of materials.

The Standard Laws of Chess

The Initial Position

1. The object in chess is to checkmate your opponent's King. Checkmate, or just "mate" occurs when a king is attacked and the king cannot escape capture on the next move. Chess is played on a board with 64 squares set up in the following way: The Rooks begin the game in the corners. The Knights (many beginning players call them horses) are next to the Rooks. The Bishops start next to the Knights. And then the King and the queen.

2. The white and black Queens both begin the game on squares of their color. The white Queen begins on a white square. The black Queen begins on a black square. And, at the beginning of the game, always start with a white square in the lower right corner of the chessboard. TO BEGIN THE GAME, white moves first, and then black... taking turns until CHECKMATE, or one player RESIGNS, or both players agree to a draw.

How Does The King Move or Capture?

1. The king can move one square in any direction. The king can also capture an opponent's piece if it is on one of those squares... assuming of course that the opponent is not defending this piece! The king can NEVER move on to a square that the opponent controls. Doing so would move the king into check.

The Phases of The Game

The Opening

The Opening is the first phase of a chess game. It deals with the first 12 - 15 moves of the chess game when the two armies begin developing their pieces, moving them off of their starting squares to places where htey will have more of an influence on the game, particularily in the center. Center control is vital in this phase, as well as time and space. Keep these three things in mind as we explore the general priniciples of the opening.

FINI - These rules were found in a 'Help' file for a Chess game for the IBM PC. Pretty heavy, eh? Thougth it was 'Just Chess... I'll be updating this page very soon with more chess information