Let's Learn to Mate! (Basic Chess for Beginners)

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Rascal

Rascal

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#1
#1
PLEASE DO NOT POST IN THIS THREAD



Welcome!



This is Chess 101, Chess for beginners, Chess for dummies, and Chess for those like me who used to think they knew how to play.​



WHAT IS CHESS?

Chess is a two-player board game played on a square, checkered board with 64 squares. Each player begins the game with sixteen pieces: One king, one queen, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, and eight pawns. Pieces move in different assigned ways according to their type, and accordingly are used to attack and capture the opponent's pieces. The object of the game is to place the opponent's king is under immediate attack where there is no way to move or defend it. (want to learn more about chess in general? >Link< )



WHAT ARE ALL THESE WEIRD TERMS? >>>Chess Dictionary<<<



[The Table of Contents will go here]



[Thread under construction- should be done in a ....few...days VM or PM me comments/issues/suggestions/questions]
 
Rascal

Rascal

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#2
#2
The Pieces

King



The king moves one square in any direction, horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. There is one special type of move, made by a king and rook simultaneously, called castling: see below.



The king is the most important piece of the game, and moves must be made in such a way that the king is never in check. A notable example would be that two opposing kings can never be placed on neighboring squares, there must always be a space between them.

Queen





The queen has the combined moves of the rook and the bishop, i.e., the queen may move in any straight line, horizontal, vertical, or diagonal.

Rook (Castle)

Movement:



The rook moves in a straight line, horizontally or vertically. The rook may not jump over other pieces, that is: all squares between the square where the rook starts its move and where the rook ends its move must be empty. (As for all pieces, when the square where the rook ends his move contains a piece of the opponent, then this piece is taken. The square where the rook ends his move may not contain a piece of the player owning this rook.)

Knight (Horse)







The knight makes a move that consists of first one step in a horizontal or vertical direction, and then one step diagonally in an outward direction. The knight jumps: it is allowed that the first square that the knight passes over is occupied by an arbitrary piece. For instance, white can start the game by moving his knight from b1 to c3. The piece that is jumped over is further not affected by the knight: as usual, a knight takes a piece of the opponent by moving to the square that contains that piece.

Bishop





The bishop moves in a straight diagonal line. The bishop may also not jump over other pieces.

Pawn









The pawn moves differently regarding whether it moves to an empty square or whether it takes a piece of the opponent. When a pawn does not take, it moves one square straight forward. When this pawn has not moved at all, i.e., the pawn is still at the second row (from the owning players view), the pawn may make a double step straight forward. For instance, a white pawn on d2 can be moved to d4.



When taking, the pawn goes one square diagonally forward.

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Pawns that reach the last row of the board promote. When a player moves a pawn to the last row of the board, he replaces the pawn by a queen, rook, knight, or bishop (of the same color). Usually, players will promote the pawn to a queen, but the other types of pieces are also allowed. (It is not required that the pawn is promoted to a piece taken. Thus, it is for instance possible that a player has at a certain moment two queens.)
 
Rascal

Rascal

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#4
#4
Common Gameplay

Exchanges and Sacrifices

[SPOILERA]

"Points" piece value system >LINK<

*please note that when making exchanges and sacrifices the end goal is more important than the "points". For example if exchanging your queen for a pawn means you win the game, then do it. [/SPOILERA]



Pins and Skewers



Forks

[SPOILERA]What is a Fork? >Link<

Royal Fork: The term royal fork is sometimes used to describe the situation where the king and queen are forked, and thus being the highest material gaining fork possible. Another term, the grand fork, is sometimes used to describe the situation where the king, queen, and one or both rooks are forked. [/SPOILERA]



En Passant

[SPOILERA]There is one special rule, called taking en-passant. When a pawn makes a double step from the second row to the fourth row, and there is an enemy pawn on an adjacent square on the fourth row, then this enemy pawn inthe next move may move diagonally to the square that was passed over by the double-stepping pawn, which is on the third row. In this same move, the double-stepping pawn is taken. This taking en-passant must be done directly: if the player who could take en-passant does not do this in the first move after the double step, this pawn cannot be taken anymore by an en-passant move.



A double pawn step, and a following en-passant capture









en-passant (and pawn promotion) animated:





[/SPOILERA]



Castling

[SPOILERA]Under certain, special rules, a king and rook can move simultaneously in a castling move.



The following conditions must be met:



The king that makes the castling move has not yet moved in the game.

The rook that makes the castling move has not yet moved in the game.

The king is not in check.

The king does not move over a square that is attacked by an enemy piece during the castling move, i.e., when castling, there may not be an enemy piece that can move (in case of pawns: by diagonal movement) to a square that is moved over by the king.

The king does not move to a square that is attacked by an enemy piece during the castling move, i.e., you may not castle and end the move with the king in check.

All squares between the rook and king before the castling move are empty.

The King and rook must occupy the same rank (or row).

When castling, the king moves two squares towards the rook, and the rook moves over the king to the next square, i.e., black's king on e8 and rook on a8 move to: king c8, rook d8 (long/queen-side castling), white's king on e1 and rook on h1 move to: king g1, rook f1 (short/king-side castling).



[/SPOILERA]



Check

[SPOILERA]When the king of a player can be taken by a piece of the opponent, one says that the king is in check. For instance, the white player moves his rook to a position such that it attacks the black king, i.e., if black doesn't do anything about it, the rook could take the black king in the next move: we say that the white rook gives check. It is considered good manners to say check when one checks ones opponent.



It is not allowed to make a move, such that ones king is in check after the move. If a player accidently tries to make such a move, he must take the move back and make another move.

[/SPOILERA]



"Discovered" Check and "Discovered" Attack

[SPOILERA]A discovered attack is a move which allows an attack by another piece. A piece is moved away so as to allow the attack of a friendly bishop, rook or queen on an enemy piece. If the attacked piece is the king, the situation is referred to as a discovered check. Discovered attacks are powerful as the moving piece may be able to pose a second threat.









A special case of a discovered check is a double check, where the piece being unmasked and the piece being moved attack the enemy king. A double check requires that the opponent moves his/her king as the king is under attack from two directions and it is impossible to counter both at the same time in any other way.[/SPOILERA]

(etc)
 
Rascal

Rascal

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#5
#5
Common Strategy

For players that understand the rules of the game, have not yet grasped the basics of strategizing here is a good >Link<



Pawns



[SPOILERA]

When positioning your pawns, keep in mind the unique movement they make when capturing a piece. This usually results in staggered diagonal defenses.



Basic pawn stragtegy: >Link<



and another >Link< on pawn structure[/SPOILERA]



Knights

[SPOILERA]Knight Strategy game >Link<

Knight Strategy >Link<[/SPOILERA]



Rooks



Bishops



Queen



King
 
Rascal

Rascal

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#7
Chess Notation

Using Chess Notation:

[SPOILERA]
[/SPOILERA]



The Board

Chess notation is the term for several systems that have developed to record either the moves made during a game of chess or the position of the pieces on a chess board. The earliest systems of notation used lengthy narratives to describe each move; these gradually evolved into terser systems of notation. Currently algebraic chess notation is the accepted standard, and is widely used.



The board is "labeled" with letters and numbers like so:







Note that each square has a unique name consisting of one letter and one number.



The Pieces:

[SPOILERA]Each type of piece (other than pawns) is identified by an uppercase letter, usually the first letter in the name of that piece in whatever language is spoken by the player recording. English-speaking players use K for king, Q for queen, R for rook, B for bishop and N for knight (since K is already used).[/SPOILERA]



The Moves

[SPOILERA]Each move of a piece is indicated by the piece's letter, plus the coordinate of the destination square. For example Be5 (move a bishop to e5), Nf3 (move a knight to f3), c5 (move a pawn to c5—no initial in the case of pawn moves). In some publications, the pieces are indicated by graphical representations rather than by initials: for example, ♞c6. This is called figurine algebraic notation or FAN and has the advantage of being language-independent.[/SPOILERA]



Captures

[SPOILERA]When a piece makes a capture, an x is inserted between the initial and the destination square. For example, Bxe5 (bishop captures the piece on e5). When a pawn makes a capture, the file from which the pawn departed is used in place of a piece initial. For example, exd5 (pawn on the e-file captures the piece on d5). The x is often omitted: ed5. A colon :)) is sometimes used instead of an x, either in the same place the x would go (B:e5) or after the move (Be5:). When it is unambiguous, a pawn capture is often indicated only by the files: exd or ed.

En passant captures are specified by the capturing pawn's file of departure, the x, and the square to which it moves (not the location of the captured pawn), followed by the suffix of "e.p." to indicate an en passant capture.[/SPOILERA]



Pawn Promotion

[SPOILERA]If a pawn moves to its last rank, achieving promotion, the piece chosen is indicated after the move, for example e1Q, b8B. Sometimes an "=" sign or parentheses are used: f8=N or a1 (R), but neither is a FIDE standard. (An "=" is written on the scoresheet next to the move to indicate an offer of a draw, but this is not part of algebraic notation.[4]) In Portable Game Notation (PGN), pawn promotion is always indicated by a suffixed "=" and the piece chosen. Pawn promotions can also be found with a "/" symbol in older books. For example g8/Q could be used to indicate promotion to a Queen.[/SPOILERA]



Castling

[SPOILERA]

Castling is indicated by the special notations 0-0 for kingside castling and 0-0-0 for queenside. Note that while the FIDE Handbook, appendix E-13 uses the digit zero, PGN requires O-O and O-O-O instead, using an upper-case letter O.[/SPOILERA]





Check and Checkmate

[SPOILERA]A move which places the opponent's king in check usually has the notation "+" added. Some use a dagger: "†". (Sometimes ch is used to indicate check.) Double check is sometimes represented "++". Checkmate can likewise be indicated "#" (some use "++" instead). Sometimes the double dagger ("‡") is used. The word 'mate' written at the end of the notation is also acceptable. [/SPOILERA]



End Game

[SPOILERA]The notation 1-0 at the end of the moves indicates that white won, 0-1 indicates that black won, and ½-½ indicates a draw. Often there is no special indication of how a player won (other than checkmate, see above), so simply "1-0" or "0-1" may be written to show that one player resigned or lost because of time control. Sometimes the word "Resigns" (or "White resigns" or "Black resigns" as appropriate) is used to show this.[/SPOILERA]



Need more help? More detail on algebraic chess notation can be found >Here<
 
Rascal

Rascal

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#14
#14
Chess.....Comedy?

ok... so granted this isnt part of the rules of chess... but I jus had to put it in for the laughs.



New to chess? Wear your Newbishness proudly:

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Chess Killed Bambi's Mother




21st Century Gamers




..... Blondes




Gender.....change




This is Sparta

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Can't Reach

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