Chess Path For Beginners — From Zero To Hero (Part 1)

Welcome back to My Chess Blog once again!

• Whether you want to start learning Chess or you want to know the rules for every single chess player, This article is especially for you!

As promised, This Series will cover :

1. How Do The Chess Pieces Move?

2. What Is Chess Notation And How Does It Work?

3. What Is Check, Checkmate And Stalemate?

4. Special Rules In Chess, That You Must Know

5. How Do You Win a Chess Game?

6. How to Learn Chess Correctly

7. How To Make Chess Improvement More Efficient

• Without Further Ado, Let’s Begin To Dive In And Explore The Amazing World Of Chess!

This is where your journey starts.

Nobody else, just you and the Chessboard.

1. How Do The Chess Pieces Move?

Before We go on to learn The Pieces’ movement, we need to discuss The Chessboard elements first.

• A Chessboard has 64 Squares, 8 Horizontals and 8 Verticals.
• The Verticals’ names are a,b,c,d,e,f,g and h.

A brief display of the Verticals.

• The Horizontals’ names are 1-st Rank, 2-nd Rank and so on, until the 8-th Rank.

A brief display of the Horizontals

• If you are confused, whether your Chessboard is set-up correctly, look at the bottom-right corner, it should be White.

Now, this rule may be weird for many of you, but you have to remember this.

• The White pieces are always placed on 1-st and 2-nd horizontals, The Black pieces accordingly get placed on 8-th and 7-th Horizontals.

If you don’t have a Chessboard with numbers and letters, use the bottom-right corner rule for setting up the pieces correctly.

Now, We move on to the pieces.

• Each side (White and Black) has 16 Pieces.

• They each have 8 Pawns, 2 Rooks, 2 Bishops, 2 Knights, 1 King and 1 Queen.

Let’s start by their movement and value.

• (Values are measured in pawns, 1 pawn= 1 point)
• Pawn — Don’t let this little piece fool you. Although only valued at 1 point, it can be extremely strong at times.

At the start of the game, all 8 pawns are placed on 2-nd and 7-th horizontals.

The White Pawns are on the 2-nd and The Black ones are on the 7-th.

• If you are still confused, here is a picture to understand it better.

A display of pawn placement.

Now, if a pawn hasn’t moved yet, it can move either 2 squares up or 1 squares up, like this :

A display of pawn movement.

• When a Pawn moves 1 square forward instead of 2 squares, it loses its power to move 2 squares up for the rest of the game.

For example, the right-most White Pawn has moved 1 squares up and now, it lost the power to go forward 2 squares.

• Now, Pawn captures are made diagonally instead of vertically. To understand this concept better, see the picture below.

An example to help you understand.

• Now, if it is White’s move, they can either advance the pawn forward, or they can take Black’s pawn, by placing the White Pawn on Black Pawn’s square and remove the Black pawn from the board.

If it is Black’s move instead, they can do the same : Either advance the pawn forward of take White’s Pawn.

Bishop — If you want to learn attacking in Chess, you must learn to utilise this piece correctly.

• Although only valued at 3 points, in some cases, they are far stronger than Rooks and sometimes, even Queens.

They have the ability to move diagonally and they capture diagonally as well, but they have one specific rule, which I’ll get to right now.

• At the start of the game, players have 2 Bishops. One starts on a light square and the other on a dark one.

The Bishops’ placement at the start of the game.

Light-squared Bishop can never move on dark squares and vice versa.

Here is an example to understand this concept better.

The Left Bishop only moves on blue-colored squares and The Right One moves on green-colored ones.

• Without any Pieces’ help, Bishops aren’t that strong, but if they unite with Queen, Rook or Knight, they can be immensely strong.

Rook — This Piece is very helpful in both attacking and defending. It is valued at 5 points and it moves/captures Vertically+Horizontally.

At the start of the game, both Rooks start in the corners, no matter the color.

• Here is an example of Rook movement to help you understand it better.

Rook movement (simplified)

• Likewise Bishops, they aren’t immensely strong on their own, but in some cases, they can be. (But it’s better to combine them with Bishops/Knights)

Queen — This piece is the strongest in the game of Chess, so, you should always try to handle it with caution. (If you lose your Queen for free, your chances of winning are practically zero)

Queen moves Vertically, Horizontally and Diagonally and it is valued at 10 points, although some value it at 9 points.

Here is an example of Queen’s movement to help you understand it better.

In this position, The Queen is able to visit these squares.

King — The Game of Chess is solely based on King Safety.

• It is the most IMPORTANT piece of the game, because if it gets attacked and the attack can’t be blocked, neutralized or dodged, the game is lost.

The King is invaluable, but if we were to value it, its value is approximately 3 points.

• The King moves diagonally, vertically and horizontally, but unlike the Queen, it can only do that by 1 square at a time.

Here is an example to understand it better.

This King can visit any of these squares.

Knight — I’ve decided to explain the Knight for last, because its movement is the trickiest.

• A Knight moves like an English “L”, but in all directions. (Or like an Russian “G”, if that’s more helpful for you).

It is valued at 3 points, just like the Bishop and likewise, it is very strong on its own, but preferably, we should combine it with the other pieces.

If you are still confused about the Knight’s movement, let me try to clear it up.

Do you see the “L” movement?

It might be hard to memorise the Knight’s movement at first, but it’s okay.

Take your time, practise each piece slowly and eventually, you will succeed!

Now, for the final thing, a standard chess position looks like this :

A standard chess position.

The Pawns start on the 2-nd and 7-th Horizontals, The Rooks in the Corners, The Knights next to the Rooks, The Bishops next to the Knights and the Queens are placed on the same color as they are.

Then, the Kings fill in the remaining squares.

I really hope, that you learned something from this Blog and I will continue this series to help all the beginners out there, struggling to improve!

Best Regards,

Thanks For Reading!