Learn how to set up a chessboard and special moves

Today, we will learn how to set up a chessboard. Of course, when you want to play a game of chess you have to know the starting squares of all the pieces. There is a picture:

As you can see the white and black pieces are set up in the exact same way, so there are no imbalances. Ok, let's explain. Firstly, we have to see the bottom- right corner of the chessboard. If it is a white square, then you are setting it up in the right way. If it is black then you have to turn the chessboard till it is white. This rule must be followed by both white and black. Also, when you are setting up the white pieces, you have to make sure that you are setting the pieces in the 1st and 2nd rank and have the a rank at your left and when setting up the black pieces, have them set up in the 7th and 8th rank, with the h rank on your left. Now, let's see the pieces. In the corners we have the rooks. Then, right next to them are the knights, next to them are the bishops and then we have the Queen and the King and its the same from the other side. The pawns just go in front of all the pieces. Now, you might ask me how do I know in which square does the King and in which the Queen go. Well, it's as simple as this: the Queen always likes to be on the square that is matching with her outfit. With that, I mean that the white Queen always starts on a light color square and the black Queen on a dark one. Then the Kings will go on the square that's left, the opposite color one. You should also know, that in their first moves, pawns, have possibility to move 2 squares instead of one! Only in their starting places! They are not obliged to move 2, but they have the possibility. In addition, the white pieces always move first! This might seem a bit difficult to learn, but trust me, you will grasp on to it really quickly.

Now, let's look at the 3 special moves that I mentioned in the last post. Namely: Promotion, Castling and En Passant.

We will firstly look at Promotion. So, it is a special move performed by the pawn. You might have wondered what happens when a pawn reaches the other side of the board. It promotes! It becomes a knight, or a bishop, or a rook or a queen! Yes, you can have 2, 3, 4,... up to 9 queens! Once it reaches the 8th rank (for white) or the 1st rank (for black) you have (you cannot leave it as a pawn) to take the pawn off the chessboard and replace it with a piece mentioned above. Careful, you cannot promote to a king!

Here, white's pawn on c7 is able to promote on c8. You usually get a Queen, as she is the most powerful piece:

Now, white should be able to win this position easily, as we will see in a later post.

Now I will show you the Castling move. Both the King and the rook participate in this move. It is a move that is usually done early in the game. The purpose of it is to get your king to the edge of the board (somewhere safe) and also bring the rook out of the corner, into the action:

I know... I know, it seems confusing, but hear me out. In white's side of things, white is able to Castle Kingside (Kingside is considered the e, f, g and h files and Queenside the a, b, c and d files).

The way it is performed is that we bring out king 2 squares towards the rook (g1 for white and g8 for black) and the rook lands right besides the king, moving 2 squares (f1 for white and f8 for black). The pawns will act as the king's shield and the rook will be out of that corner. Castling Queenside (in this case, black is castling queenside) is a bit different: The king still moves 2 square towards the rook (c1 for white and c8 for black) but this time the rook moves 3 squares and lands besides the king (d1 for white and d8 for black). This is the position that would occur if both sides castled:

Note that some parameters have to e considered when castling:

Firstly, castling is prohibited when either the King or the castling rook has moved.

Secondly, castling is prohibited if the squares that the king passes through or lands to are attacked by enemy pieces.

Thirdly, castling is prohibited if there are pieces in the way of the King and castling rook.

Lastly, castling is prohibited if the King is in check.

Now, we are going to learn the final special move: En Passant.

It again involves the pawn. So, it is a rule that takes place in specific positions, so you probably won't get to use it quite as often. Here is my definition:

When a pawn (we'll call it A) advances 2 squares and lands right next to an enemy pawn (we'll call it B), then B can capture A as if A had only moved one square.:

As you can see the white a2 pawn advanced to the a4 square. Then the black b4 pawn has the possibility of capturing it, as if it had only moved one square, which it does.

NOTE that you can only perform en passant at the move your opponent moved the pawn to a position which can be captured en passant:

In this position, black just moved his c7 pawn to c5. White can either take the black pawn via en passant, move his pawn to d6 (sorry I do not have it on the picture) or move his king. Let's say he decides to move his king and black does so as well:

Now, only the white king is able to move and now, the pawn cannot capture en passant, since it didn't do it on the turn black played that pawn move.

That's all folks :) Hope you enjoyed it. I don't exactly know what I will write about for tomorrow, so it's gonna be a surprise! C ya.

Learning piece movement

Hello, in the previous post, I talked about the chessboard. Now I will elaborate on the pieces' movements! We will start off with the most important piece in chess... the King. Although he might be moving way less squares, compared to other pieces, he is the most important one, because if we lose him, we lose the game! Also remember that only one piece can be on a square at a time.

The king moves 1 square at a time in all directions just like that:

Pretty simple right? Now I will show you the way he 'eats' (takes pieces off the board)... Well, there is not much to show, he 'eats', or ( more correctly) captures pieces, the same way he moves. He just takes the piece off the chessboard and is placed on its (now vacant) square. It should also be noted that no piece can capture an ally! ( a piece of its own color). Now for example look at this picture

In this position the black king on e3 has the option of capturing the piece (it is a Knight) on e4 or he could just move to some other square, namely, d4, d3, d2, e3, e2, f4, f3 and f2. lets say he decided to capture the knight. Then the white piece will be taken off the board and the black king would take its place:

Got how the king moves? Great... Now an other important rule... the king is prohibited to move to a square that it is attacked by the enemy... For example in the final position of the previous example(3rd picture), it is white's turn to move. He could either move the pawn or the king. For the lesson's sake, let's ignore the pawn for now. The king can normally move to 8 different squares... But in this situation the white king can only move to 7! to f7, f6, g7, g6, g5, h7, h6 and h5. You might think that I forgot f5. Well, I actually did not! the black king is attacking the f5 square, thus the white king is not able to move there. Similarly, if black were to move, he would not be able to move to f5 either, because the white king is attacking it. In addition, when an enemy piece attacks the king, then the king has to immediately find a safe square, or a piece has to block the attack to the king, or the attacking piece has to be captured when none of these are possible, then the game is over and the side that couldn't protect its king loses and the opposing wins.

Now, let's move on to the Rook. It can move in a straight line ( horizontally and vertically), forwards and backwards:

 Very easy! But what if a piece stands on a rook's way?

If it is a friendly piece (a piece that is the same color) then the rook cannot capture it. In this case, the white bishop on g4 is a friendly piece and thus cannot be captured by the white rook on d4. But if it is an enemy piece, in this instance, the pawn on d6, then the rook on d4 can capture it, meaning, taking it off the chessboard and placing the rook on its square, just like the king (the same rule applies to all pieces). It should also be noted that the rook cannot jump over other pieces, whether they are enemy pieces or friendly ones, so the rook does not have access to h4, because the white bishop is blocking it as it does not have access to the d7 and d8 squares, as the black pawn is obstructing the rook's view. The way the rook captures is pretty simple... just as the last example, the rook captures in the same way it moves.

Let's move on to the Bishop! It can only move diagonally, forwards and backwards:

You might have noticed that the bishop can only land on squares that are the same color as the square it started on... you are right, just as I showed you in the learning the chessboard post, in the diagonals part. It captures just in the same way it moves. When there are pieces in the way it acts just like the rook. Friendly piece= cannot capture.

Enemy piece= can capture

It also cannot jump over pieces, just like the rook.

Next up we have the Queen! The most powerful piece.

She can move in the same way a rook and a bishop can:

The same capturing rules apply, can only capture enemy pieces and does so in the way it moves and the same rules about another piece getting in her way apply, she cannot jump over it.

2 pieces are left and they are the most difficult ones to learn, so be aware!

Now, we are going to examine the Knight's movement!
He moves forwards and backwards in an L shape:

Can you see the L that is formed when it moves? Remember it moves 2 forwards and 1 the left/right. It will take time to get used to the knight's movement. Now we will talk about what happens when a piece is in the way... he ignores it... he is the only piece that can jump over pieces, both friendly and unfriendly!!! Even if there are 2 pieces I its way, he can ignore them and get right into the landing square. NOTE that it can only capture a piece that is on its landing square!!! I will give you an example:

In this position, the white knight on e5 (I know it does not have letters nor numbers but pretend that it does) can capture the black bishop on c4 (or it can move to d3, f3, g4, g6, f7, d7 and c6) . It cannot capture the rook on d5! as it is not on its landing squares. The knight also cannot capture friendly pieces (what a surprise?!?).

Last but not least we have the pawn! I warn you it is the most perplexed piece!

The pawn can only move forwards, vertically, one square at a time (except when it is on its starting square, which we will see which this is in a later post). It cannot jump over other pieces. It is the only piece that does not capture the way it moves! It moves vertically, but it captures diagonally (only forwards yet again)!:

In this instance, the white pawn on d5 can capture the black queen on c6, or capture the black knight on e5 or move to d6. The pawn can only capture one square diagonally!

I hope you enjoyed this post. Please comment or continue viewing my next posts, because I put a lot of work into these,  this one took me about 2h+, but it was worth it :)

In the next post, I am going to cover 3 special moves concerning the pawn, the king and the rook, so be alert, because probably tomorrow, it will be ready.

Learning the chesboard

Let's start with the basics... Chess is a game played by 2 players, both of them controlling 16 pieces each. The players' calculation, memory and strategy skills will determine who the winner of this war is. The battlefield that this 'war' takes place is called a chessboard. It has 64 alternate color squares (usually black and white). The goal of the game is to checkmate your opponent's king. I will explain what that means in detail later. For now we are going to focus on the chess board and how to talk about it.

This is a chessboard. See the letters? They represent the files. For example when we are talking about the a- file these are the squares we are referring to

The numbers represent the ranks, so when we are talking about the fifth rank, we are referring to these squares

Understood? good. So remember the Letters represent the files and the Numbers represent the ranks!

Now, you might ask me what if I do not want to be so general and I want to talk about a specific square out of the 64. Well... it is the same as the coordinates system. We say the letter and then the number that square belongs to. For example the g6 square is this one

Remember! The letter always goes first.

Except from horizontal and vertical lines, we also have the diagonals. To talk about a diagonal, we use the first and last squares to mark it The squares between the first and the last squares are within that diagonal. For example the h1- a8 or the a8- h1 diagonal (that also happens to be the largest diagonal in chess along with the a1- h8 or h8-a1 diagonal) is the following.

Also note that the squares that a diagonal contains always have the same color.

That's all you need to know about the chessboard itself. I hope you found this post useful and that you will continue following this blog as more useful lessons are coming :)

Hello and welcome to this blog, in which I am going to be talking about chess. I will try to help all you, beginners out there, trying to master the art of chess. At first I will be going through the fundamentals and then I will get more into the advanced stuff. Expect uploads from me daily or day after day. It will depend on the amount of homework I have. I hope you enjoy this blog and keep on playing :)