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Chess

Another popular game is chess, played by two players at a time 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:

Chess Board

Chess Pieces

Rook	Knight	Bishop	Queen	King	Pawn

Each player has 6 different types of chess pieces: there are 8 pawns, 2 rooks, 2 knights, 2 bishops, 1 queen, and 1 king. The pawns are the smallest pieces, and you will recognize them because there are eight of them. The rooks look like tiny little castles with jagged edges, and are sometimes called castles.

The knights look like horse heads. The bishops are the pieces with little balls on the top and may have a cross marked on them. The king is the tallest piece and has a cross on top. The last piece is the queen, which is the 2nd tallest piece and has a little crown around the top.

Now, one player will be the white pieces, and one will be the black pieces. The way to decide is for you to put a pawn in each hand, black in one, white in the other, switch them around behind your back, and then have Tom pick a hand. Whichever colour pawn Tom picks, that's the colour he'll be for the game. This might seem like a useless detail, but it's actually very important. This is because whoever is white always makes the first move of the game.

Now you have heard of train spotting, and what a train spotter is :) Well chess players are that sort of person :) they have a world of there own, and get quite exited about the game, and will shout of you happen to call those areas of the board the wrong name. (Sorry chess players)

Do Not ! refer to the rows and columns on a chessboard as a "row" and a "column." You must refer to them as a "rank" and a "file." Here are two clues to remembering which is which, Think of a file like a single file line, which you usually think of as front to back, which will remind you that the files are the columns, just remember that "row" and "rank" both begin with an R.
And ! each rank has a number and each file has a letter, so that everybody can follow what's going on. For example, your knight is in box b1 . Joe's king is on e8. You always list the rank, then the file.
Moving the pieces
If the piece in the square is yours, you have to move it out of the way before you can occupy it.
If the piece in the square is Joes's, then you can "capture" his piece. You then put your piece in the square on the board, take his piece off the board.
The Rook
The rook is very easy, it only moves up and down, or side to side. It can't go diagonal or sideways or anything else except along a rank or file. It is not allowed to jump over any pieces.

The Bishop
The bishop can only move in a diagonal line for as many spaces as it likes until something blocks it. It also cannot jump over any other pieces during its move. Since bishops only move in diagonal lines, they'll always stay on the same colour square that they started on, one starts on a black square, and one on a white.

The Queen
The queen is a combination of the rook and the bishop, it can move as many spaces as it likes along a rank, file, or diagonal. Check out all of the ways a queen can move on the board below.

The King
The king is exactly like the queen, except for that like all husbands, he's not as powerful as his wife. He can move in any direction, but only for one box.

The Knight
The knight can only move in an L-shape. This means that it moves a total of three boxes, 2 straight 1-sideways, or 1-straight 2-sideways.

 

Note how for the knight to move to any one of these spaces, it must moves in an L. Unlike any other piece, the knight is always allowed to jump over other pieces to land in an empty square. It doesn't matter whether it's jumping over yours or Joes's, as long as the knight lands in an empty square.
The Pawn
The pawns are the first line of defence for your king, but you have so many of 'em, that an individual pawn is relatively worthless. Pawns are so weak, that they're not even really called pieces. They're just pawns. They can only move one space forward. That's it. They can't move backwards, sideways, diagonal, jump over other pieces, or do anything else.

There are THREE exceptions to this rule:

1, If a pawn is coming out of its box for the first time, you have the option to move it either one or two spaces.

2, When a pawn captures another piece, it can ONLY capture it by moving one box forward in a diagonal. It can't capture a piece head on.

3, When your pawn reaches the opposite end of the board, it gets a promotion. This means that it can become any piece it wants to be, getting that piece's rules, powers. Promote your pawn into a queen  !!

How to win the game
Move your pieces around so that no matter where Joe tries to move his king, it would get captured. It's all about trapping the king. But before you capture Joe's king, you have to be polite enough to give him a warning. Chess is the game of gentlemen. So there are three different situations in which a king can be threatened. Check, stalemate, and checkmate

Check
This is when Joe's king is being threatened. When you move one of your pieces so that it would capture the king unless Joe did something about it.
Checkmate
Now checkmate occurs when the king is in check, but has no way to escape it.
Stalemate
Basically, they're a tie in the games. It's when your king is in a safe square, but if you move out of it, then your king gets captured. Since you're not allowed to pass a turn in the game of chess, a stalemate is declared.

Well that's about it, well not really, there is a lot more to a game of chess, and people learn all the skills and become professional players.