How To Play Chess

Hello I made this beginner tutorial for chess when I was in third grade. Even though it took a couple weeks I think it was worth it. I am extremely proud of it and had lots of fun making it so I hope you enjoy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How To Play Chess

Table Of Contents

Introduction……………………………………………………1

How to Set Up The Board………………………….………..2

How The Pieces Move……………………………………….3

How to Notate………………………………………………...5

Different Stages Of The Game……………………………...6

Opening Principles……………………………………………6

Middle Game Plan and execution…………………………
Endgame Strategy…………………………………………….

Introduction

    Once in a while you might’ve been to a park and seen people play a speedy game where you barely see the figures move or a slow tactical game taking minutes between moves. Those pieces might be wood and spherical or marble and engraved. These games are most likely chess or checkers. This book explains how pieces move and what the good moves are in chess. I won’t be able to discuss the best move in every position because there are more moves than atoms in the universe, But I can explain the basics. 

How to Setup The Board

    When you set up a chess board you have to make sure that a white square is in the bottom right corner. The board is 8 x 8 There is another thing called coordinates. The coordinates start in the bottom left corner on white’s side. After that going up the board there are numbers, and going to the right there are letters. The numbers are called ranks and the letters are called files. In the starting  position white’s pieces are on the first and second ranks while the black pieces are on the seventh and eighth ranks. 

    When you actually put the pieces on the board put the pieces coming from both sides in in this order Rook, Knight, and Bishop. Then there’s the King and the Queen. Place the Queen on her own color (black Queen on a black square and the white Queen on a White Square) and the King right next to her.

How The Pieces Move

Pawns 

    Pawns move one space each move and capture diagonally with one exception.  On a Pawn’s first move it can go two spaces instead of one. A pawn cannot move forward if they have to jump over another piece or the square they want to land on is blocked. Once a Pawn gets to the end it can be promoted into any other piece except the King. There is one more rule, when a Pawn moves forward two on that pawn’s first move and it could’ve been captured by another Pawn if it only moved forward one square it can still be captured by that Pawn.When it is captured the Pawn that took it goes to the square where it would be if the other Pawn only moved one square forward. This move is called en passant. 

Knights

    Knights move in an L shape. They go out one square and then one diagonally in that direction. It is one of the simplest pieces in chess yet it is still very useful.

Bishops and Rooks

    In chess Bishops and Rooks are pretty similar in the way they move. Bishops move diagonally and can’t jump over other pieces. Rooks move horizontally and vertically and can’t jump over pieces like the Bishop.

The Queen and the King

     The Queen is a combination of the Rook and the Bishop. It moves diagonally horizontally and vertically and is considered the strongest piece in chess. The King is like the Queen but it can only move one square in each direction. The goal of chess is to capture the King. If your King is under attack you have to move it to a safe square where it will not be captured. When your king is under attack it is called check but if there is not a protective move (moving to safety, capturing the attacker or blocking the attack) it is called checkmate. Once you are checkmated you have lost the game. There is another move with the King and the Rook called castling. Castling is a good way to protect your king. To castle you have to move your king over two to the King's side or the Queen’s side. (different sides of the board are indicated by if your King or your Queen is on that side.) Then you have to move your Rook so that it’s one square away from the king. The Rook must be on the side of the king that is closest to the other side of the board. There are four circumstances where you would not be able to castle. #1 You can’t castle if your King or the Rook that you’re trying to castle with has already moved in the game. #2 You can’t castle if you are in check. #3 you can’t castle if there are any pieces in between the Rook that you’re castling with and your King. #4 you can’t castle if any of the squares between your King and the Rook that you’re castling with are under attack.

How to Notate

    When you play a bad game of chess you’re most likely to want to know what you did wrong. When you play chess online your moves will be notated and recorded so that you can check how accurate your moves were but when you play in person it is likely that no one is notating your moves. That is why it is useful to know how to notate. Every time you notate you start with the first letter of the piece you moved and don’t forget that the letter must be uppercase. There are two exceptions to this rule. Since Knights and Kings both start with K, Knights use the letter N instead of K. You’d think that Pawns use the letter P but they don’t use a letter for a reason I don’t know of. Then, you put the coordinates of the destination square.

    If one of your opponent’s pieces is on the square that you want to land and capture it, put a lowercase X before the coordinates of the destination square. There are a few (few being several million) cases where another piece of the same type also could move to the square you moved to on the last move. In this case you have to figure out what file the piece you moved was. If they both were on the same file check the ranks. If three pieces of the same type could attack the piece you captured or the square you moved to then put the letter for the file and the number for the rank. Put the coordinates for the square it came from right after  the first letter.

    Finally there are the symbols for check and checkmate. The symbol for checkmate is a hashtag while the symbol for check is the addition symbol +. This symbol belongs at the very end of the notation.

Different Stages Of The Game

    There are three different stages of the game. Those stages are the opening, the middle game and the end game. The game starts off with the opening. Players will start developing during the opening to prepare to attack or defend against the opposing color. Once most of this preparation is complete players will attack each other's camps. This phase or stage is called the middle game. During the middle game players start to trade down pieces. Once enough pieces have been captured the endgame begins. Players will most likely not have power to checkmate the King early in this phase. In the endgame players try their best to promote one of their Pawns to checkmate the King and win the game.

Opening Principles

    When you first start to play you're going to want to know how to make good moves to gain an advantage instead of making bad moves and gaining a disadvantage. This part of this book is about the principles of the opening. The three main objectives in the opening are to develop pieces (moving your pieces to squares where they attack and defend different squares in the position), protect your king and controlling the center where most of the pieces are. When you start developing you want to start with your two central pawns in front of your King and Queen to attack d5 and e5 (or in a case when you’re black e4 and d4). Next you develop your Knights. Your Knight’s main purpose is to reinforce this attack and defend your pawns. Then you should move out your Bishops so that you can castle. You don’t have to develop all of your pieces in the opening before you castle because you have to castle your King so that you aren’t as vulnerable to attack.

Middle Game Plan And Execution

    As I explained earlier the objective of the game is to checkmate your opponent’s King. To achieve checkmate you have to attack their King. The best time to start this attack is right at the beginning of the middlegame.  When you attack the first thing you are going to want to do is try to attack with a pawn storm. A pawn storm is when you advance your pawns on the side of the board that your opponent’s King castled on to try to open up their king to let your other piece into the attack easily. When you move your pieces towards the enemy King it is best to move them in a way that creates threats such as winning material, a fork, or check. This makes it harder to prepare for an attack because they have to deal with multiple threats.

     When you are under attack in multiple areas on the board you have a few options. The first option is to defend all of the pieces at once. The second option is to create a greater threat such as checkmate. This is called danger levels. For example if your Bishop was under an attack and wasn’t protected you could threaten their Rook or Queen. Yet there are a couple cases when your piece can be taken with a check. This is a problem because you will have to respond to this check and you won’t be able to execute that attack of higher value.

Endgame Tactics

    In the end game your King is a  very powerful piece since there aren’t many pieces that can attack it late in the game. That is one reason why you should move your King towards the center during the end game. Some other reasons are to do this are to be able to be more mobile and defend threats that your opponent creates. It is commonly hard to checkmate your opponent in the end game because you might have so little material. This is why one of the main goals of the end game is to promote your pawns into higher ranked pieces. Yet your opponent’s pawns most likely will be blocking you.

    That is why it is important to learn about pawn breaks. A pawn break is a sequence of pawn moves and sacrifices to clear a path for one of you pawns to promote. Normally it is better to create two pawn breaks in case your opponent’s king can attack them and prevent them from being promoted.

    When you make these pawn breaks you have to make sure they’re out of the reach of your opponent’s king. There is a fast way to see if your opponent’s king can reach your pawn’s promotion. Once you execute the pawn break  check if their King can enter the square of the pawn on their move. The square of the pawn is a bunch of squares forming a larger square. This square can 2*2 3*3 4*4 and so on. The size is determined by how far the pawn is from promotion. To find the square find the side of the pawn the king is on and look down the diagonal toward their side of the board. At the end of that diagonal come back toward your side until you reach the same rank as your pawn. Then make that imaginary line travel back to your pawn and close off the box by going down to the end of the board and back to the end of the diagonal. If your opponent’s king can’t enter this square on their move then your pawn will be able to promote your pawn. Also if your pawn still can move two because it hasn’t moved yet then you will have to look into the future and see if the king can enter the square after you move forward two.