How the chess pieces move

Before any strategy, you need to master one thing: how each piece moves and captures. There are only six types of piece, and in a few minutes you will know them all. This guide shows every move with a diagram so the pattern sticks the first time.

The board has 64 squares, alternating light and dark. Each player starts with 16 pieces. One rule holds for all of them: you capture an enemy piece by moving onto its square, and it leaves the game. Pieces can never jump over one another. The only exception is the knight.

The rook

The rook moves in a straight line: as many squares as it likes, horizontally or vertically, as long as the path is clear. It is a long-range piece, powerful on open files.

The bishop

The bishop moves along the diagonals, as many squares as it likes. Each bishop is stuck on the color it started on: one travels only on light squares, the other only on dark. That is why the two bishops together, the bishop pair, are so valuable: they cover the whole board.

The queen

The queen is the strongest piece: she combines the powers of the rook and the bishop. She moves any number of squares in a straight line or along a diagonal. Precisely because she is so valuable, it is unwise to expose her too early, because she can become an easy target.

The knight

The knight is the quirkiest piece. It moves in an "L": two squares one way and one square perpendicular. It is also the only piece that jumps over others, so no blockade holds it. From a central square, the knight attacks up to eight squares at once.

The pawn

The pawn moves forward one square at a time and never backward. On its very first move it may advance one or two squares. And here is the twist: the pawn captures diagonally, not straight ahead. So it pushes forward but eats sideways.

The pawn looks humble, but it is the soul of chess. It is the only piece that never retreats, so every push is permanent: a pawn that leaves f2 will never again defend e3 or g3. Shoving pawns without thinking leaves holes you cannot repair. In exchange, a pawn that survives all the way to the far rank promotes and turns into another piece, almost always a queen.

The king

The king moves one square in any direction. He is slow, but he is the most important piece: the goal of the game is to checkmate the enemy king, attacking him with no escape. The king may never move into an attacked square, and the two kings can never stand on adjacent squares.

What each piece is worth

The pieces do not weigh the same. To decide whether a trade is good, players use a point scale measured in the most basic currency of the game: the pawn.

• Pawn: 1 point. Short and slow, but the only piece that can promote.
• Knight: 3 points. Jumps blockades and hits up to eight squares from the center.
• Bishop: 3 points. Worth slightly more than a knight in open positions, where the diagonals run long.
• Rook: 5 points. Grows when files open, and grows again when it reaches the seventh rank.
• Queen: 9 points. A rook and a bishop in the same piece.
• King: priceless. Lose the king and you lose the game, so he never enters the material count.

These numbers are not rules. They summarize how many squares a piece tends to attack and how freely it travels, and they let you judge a trade on the spot: giving a knight to win a rook (3 for 5) is almost always good business. Real value moves with the position. A bishop locked behind its own pawns is worth less than the 3 on paper, and a passed pawn one move from promoting is worth far more than 1.

How the pieces work together

Knowing the moves is the start. What separates players who understand the game is knowing what each piece needs in order to do any work. Every piece has a habitat.

The rook wants an open file, a file with no pawns on it. Stuck behind its own pawns on the back rank, it is little more than a spectator. The bishop wants clear diagonals, which is why parking your pawns on the same color as your bishop smothers it. The knight, which covers little ground per move, wants a central square defended by a friendly pawn: planted on e5 or d5 where no enemy pawn can chase it away, it runs the middle of the board.

Look at each family. The rooks went to the only file without pawns. The bishops on d3 and d6 see h7 and h2 with nothing in the way. And each knight has a dream square: the white one on f3 wants e5, defended by the d4 pawn, while the black one on f6 wants e4, defended by the d5 pawn. Reading a position this way is what the strategy guides build on.

The three special moves

Three moves break the pattern you just learned. In castling, the king and one rook move on the same turn, and it is the only time the king travels two squares. In en passant, a pawn captures an enemy pawn that has just advanced two squares, landing on the square it skipped. In promotion, a pawn reaching the far rank turns into another piece. Each has conditions worth learning properly, so read the guide to castling, en passant and promotion instead of improvising at the board.

A sample opening

Putting it together, here is how a game usually begins. White grabs the center with a pawn, develops a knight and a bishop, and prepares to safeguard the king:

Every move has a purpose: control the center, activate the pieces, prepare to castle. That is exactly the spirit of a good opening. The letters are the international standard: K king, Q queen, R rook, B bishop, N knight (N, because K is taken). A pawn move carries no letter, only the square.