Rules
Your First Chess Game: from empty board to your first checkmate
Updated Jul 27, 2026 · 5 min read
A complete first game guide: setting up the board, who moves first, what the pieces are worth, an opening plan in three sentences, and your first checkmate.
A chess game starts before the first move: it starts with the board set up correctly. This guide runs from the box of pieces to your first checkmate, in the order things actually happen: set up, move, evaluate, finish. No memorization required.
Set the board up right
Turn the board until the light square sits in the right hand corner for each player. Fill the back rank from the outside in: rooks in the corners, knights beside them, bishops next. Two squares are left in the middle, and this is where nearly everyone slips: the queen goes on her own color (the white queen on a light square, the black queen on a dark one) and the king takes the square that remains, right beside her. The pawns come last, in a wall across the front.
- Light square in your right hand corner.
- Rooks in the corners, knights beside them, bishops next.
- Queen on her own color: d1 and d8.
- King beside the queen: e1 and e8.
- Eight pawns across the rank in front.
Who moves first and how you win
White always moves first, and from there the moves alternate, one at a time, with no passing. The goal is not to capture everything: it is to deliver checkmate, attacking the enemy king so it cannot run, block, or capture the attacker. Any time the king is attacked it is in check, and getting out of check is compulsory on the very next move: checkmate is a check with no way out. The king is never actually captured: the game ends the moment mate appears.
There is also a way to neither win nor lose. If the player to move is not in check and has no legal move at all, the game ends in stalemate, which is a draw. Learn that word now: it steals wins from beginners who are already a queen ahead. A draw can also come from the two players agreeing to one.
What the pieces are worth
You do not need to calculate ten moves ahead to play well. You need to know what things cost. This is the yardstick every player uses, measured in pawns, and it is a guide, not a law.
- Pawn: 1. Promotes when it reaches the far side, almost always to a queen.
- Knight: 3. The only piece that jumps.
- Bishop: 3. Long range, one color of square only.
- Rook: 5. Strong on an open file.
- Queen: 9. A rook and a bishop in one.
- King: priceless. Losing it loses everything.
Use the numbers as a scale before any capture. Trading your knight (3) for an enemy rook (5) is a good deal. Winning a pawn (1) and then dropping a bishop (3) is a two point loss. Knights and bishops are worth about the same, so swapping one for the other is neutral and the position decides. And resist sending the queen out to hunt pawns early: a piece worth 9 chasing one worth 1 ends up kicked around by knights and bishops that develop while attacking her.
An opening plan in three sentences
You do not need the name of a single opening to play the first ten moves well. You need three sentences. Take the center with a pawn. Bring knights and bishops to squares where they see the center. Castle to get your king out of the middle. If every move you make does one of those jobs, your opening is already better than most beginners manage, and you memorized nothing.
An example that follows the three sentences exactly:
Notice how moves are written: a capital letter for the piece (N knight, B bishop, R rook, Q queen, K king) plus the square it lands on. The knight takes N because the king already owns K. A pawn gets no piece letter, so e4 means "pawn to e4", and when a pawn captures it shows the file it came from, as in exd5. Kingside castling is written O-O, with the capital letter O, never a zero.
What to check before every move
The question that separates players who improve fast from players who stall comes right after the opponent moves: what did that move attack? Every piece that moves starts aiming at new squares, and that is where lost pieces come from. Before you play your own idea, trace the lines that just changed. Five seconds there prevents a lot of losses.
- What did their last move attack?
- Is a piece of mine attacked and undefended?
- Is anything free to take? Who defends that square?
- Is my king safe? How many of their pieces point at it?
- And what does my own piece attack after the move?
The easiest checkmate of all
Winning material is half the job. The other half is turning the advantage into checkmate, and the easiest one to learn is king and queen against a lone king. Three steps: push the enemy king to the edge with your queen, walk your own king up to help, and only then give the final check. The queen cannot finish alone, she only confines; without the king helping, you push the enemy around forever.
From here, Qe7 is checkmate. The queen steps right next to the black king and is protected by the white king on e6, so she cannot be taken. The d8 and f8 squares are covered by the queen herself. This is the pattern behind almost every won endgame: queen beside the king, king defending the queen.