Chess

Chess

As many of you already know, chess is a wonderful strategy game played by two players. Chess is also very popular as a computer game, although it is quite hard to beat the computer at chess, especially if the strength of the computer game is set at its maximum. Many chess clubs and tournaments exist across the world. Also, there is an international chess tournament in which national champions compete for the title of International chess Grandmaster.

Chess is a game of strategy and is believed to be linked to mathematical ability. If you are good at mathematics, you will likely be good at chess and vice versa. Many strategy books exist on the subject.

The rules of chess are easy to remember. Each piece has a different way in which it can move across the board and capture the opponent’s pieces. White always moves first. The Queen is the strongest piece, followed by the rooks and then the bishops and knights, and finally the pawns, which are weakest pieces of the set. However, only a pawn can be promoted to Queen, once it reaches the opponents end of the board. The objective of the game is to checkmate the opponent’s King. The King, similar to the Queen, can move in all directions, but unlike the Queen, can only do so for one square at a time. The two Kings cannot stand side by side, which is why it is possible to also use the King to checkmate an opponent. Perhaps the easiest way to checkmate an opponent is using the Queen and one or two Rooks.

Castling early on in the game is considered good strategy. You can castle King side or Queen side, King side being usually considered stronger. Often, it is advised to move one pawn (the last one) one square forward for the King to a have a space to move to in order to avoid a checkmate by the opponent placing a Rook or the Queen at the end of the “corridor”.

To be a good chess player, a lot of practice is needed and reading chess strategy books also helps. Professional chess games are usually timed, so there is an interplay between time spent on thinking and predicting move combinations. Similarly, for example on Mac computers, the inbuilt chess game has settings that have speed at one extreme of the continuum and strength at the other. We hope this article was helpful and/or informative and we wish you enjoyable games!

(Image in public domain, source: pixabay.com).

Where Kings and Queens Reign

The mind fields of chess

When it comes to drama, intrigue, and byzantine rules, few games can match chess, which is thought to date back to sixth-century India or China. Odds are you won’t become the next Bobby Fisher, who at age 15 was the youngest international grand master in history, but here are the rules that will take you to the endgame: capturing the enemy’s king.

Opponents face each other across the board, which has eight rows of eight squares each, alternately white and black. Each player gets 16 pieces of one color, black or white. From least to most important, the pieces are: 8 pawns, 2 knights, 2 bishops, 2 rooks (or castles), 1 queen and 1 king.

Place the board so that each player has a light square at the nearest right-hand corner. In the row closest to you, place in order from left to right: rock, knight, bishop, queen, king, bishop, knight, and rook. Line up the pawns next to each other in the row directly in front of these pieces.

A piece can move only into a square that’s not occupied by another piece owned by the same player. If an enemy piece occupies the square, it is captured. You remove the captured piece from the board and put your piece in its place.

A pawn moves forward one square at a time, except for its first move when it can go one or two squares. A knight makes an L-shaped move, going two squares forward, backword, or sideways, then another square at a right angle. It’s the only piece that can jump over another piece. A bishop goes diagonally forward, backward, or sideways, for any distance. The queen is a potent force. She moves forward, backward, sideways, and diagonally for any number of squares in one direction. The king’s moves are like the queen’s except that he moves one square at a time, as long as it’s unoccupied or not under attack by an enemy piece.

When a king is under attack by an enemy piece, the king is in cheek. The player whose king is in check has several options : to move the king to safety, to capture the attacker, or to move another piece to a square between the king and the attacker. If a player can’t take any of these moves, the king is captured of “checkmated”, and the game is over.

Pieces capture an opponent’s man by moving as they normally do, except for the pawn. It can capture any of its opponent’s pieces that are diagonally next to and ahead of it.

A pawn can also take an enemy pawn “en passant,” or in passing. Say an opponent starts by moving his pawn two squares, instead of one, putting it next to one’s pawn. You can take that piece by moving diagonally to the square directly behind it. But do it immediately: you can’t wait for your next turn.

Once in each game, in a move called castling, a king gets to move two spaces. Castling is done only if the king is not in check, there are no pieces between the king and a rook, and neither piece has yet made a move. The two-part move is done by moving the king two squares toward the rook and then putting the rook on the square passed over by the king. Castling counts as one move.

Thank you for reading.