A complete guide on how to play chess. Please do not publicly distribute my work without my permission. This is for informational/educational purposes only.

How to play chess!!

Alvand11

Updated: Jul 14, 2025, 3:21 AM | 9

Hello, do YOU want to play chess? Here is the complete guide on how to play this timeless, but wonderful game. To find meanings of words in this guide you don't know, go to section 10.

Edit: I am working on a part 2.

1. Some history: First made as Chaturanga, the game of chess was invented around 1,500 years ago in India, during the Gupta empire. It was then found by the Persians, developed, modified, and spread more by them, eventually becoming the timeless and popular game we know today as chess, with over 170 million users just on this website, chess.com!

2. General information: There are 64 squares on a chess board, alternating from light squares and dark squares. The 64 make is an 8×8 square. The chess board's bottom-left corner must be a dark square, to make sure the pieces are set properly. Image for reference:

In the game of chess, there are 2 sides; White and Black. Both sides have 16 pieces, adding to 32 pieces total in the beginning of the game. White starts the game, and then black responds. Each side has 20 first moves, ranging from good to bad. You can capture other pieces, but the main goal of the game is to checkmate the king. In standard chess, there are 6 piece types; Pawns, Knights, Bishops, Rooks, Queens, and Kings. Visit section 4 to see how they all move. How many of each piece there is in the beginning of the game (for one side): 8 Pawns, 2 Knights, 2 Bishops, 2 Rooks, 1 Queen, and 1 King. Each piece is also worth a specific amount of points, to show how much it's worth; Pawn=1, Knight=3, Bishop=3, Rook=5, Queen=9, the King has no value. Starting position in a chess game:

3. Objective (How to win): The goal of chess is to checkmate the king, meaning to attack the king in a way with your pieces that he cannot take your piece, block the attack (also called check), or run away from it. If you do so, you win the game. Here is a basic checkmate example:

The King has nowhere to go, as the Queen blocks each path, and the Rook defends the Queen.

4. How the pieces move:

Pawn: The pawn can move 2 squares forward on it's first move, going only one square forward after that. It can also move 1 square on it's first move. Pawns cannot go backward. Pawns capture other pieces 1 square diagonally forward of where they are located. When a pawn reaches the other end side of the board, it can promote. This means that it can turn into any other piece that isn't a pawn or a King. Pawns also play a special move called En passant. En passant is when your pawn has crossed your half of the board, into the other half, and an enemy pawn to the left or the right of your pawn pushes 2 squares forward, becoming adjacent either to the left or right of your pawn. On that move, and that move only, you can take the pawn by going diagonally in front of that pawn. Images for reference:

Knight: The Knight can hop over pieces, being the only piece able to do so. The Knight moves in an L shape, moving 2 squares orthogonally in any direction, and then going one square to the left or the right that you drew. It captures on the square that it lands on. Images for reference:

Bishop: The Bishop moves diagonally on a specific colour square, never being able to change into the opposite square. It captures on the square it lands on, and it cannot hop over pieces.

Rook: The Rook moves orthogonally, or moves in a straight line. It cannot hop over pieces, and captures on the square it lands on.

Queen: Simply put, the Queen moves like a Rook and a bishop. The better way to explain it, is that it moves Orthogonally and diagonally. It cannot hop over pieces, and it captures on the square it lands on.

King: The King moves orthogonally and diagonally to an adjacent square, unless it goes in check. Check is an instance where your opponent's piece(s) attack your king. When this happens, you must take the attacking piece, block the attack, or move your king to a square in which it isn't being attacked. Kings capture in the square they go to, but they cannot capture a piece if it is defended by another piece. If a King gets attacked (checked) by another piece, but cannot take the piece, block the attack, or run away, it is checkmated. As said earlier in section 3, the goal of the game is to get checkmate. So if you get checkmated, you lose the game. Also, Kings cannot go adjacent to each other. Kings also have a special move called castling, where the King moves 2 squares to the left or the right, and the Rook jumps over the King, being adjacent to it either in the d file or the f file, depending on which side to castle (go to section 5 to see what files mean/are). To castle, you must first move all the pieces between your king and a Rook away so you have space to castle. If you move your Rook on the side you want to castle, you cannot castle on that side. If you move your King before castling, you can't castle. Images for reference of Kings, captures, checks, checkmate, castling:

Here, the king cannot take the pawn, because the Queen defends it.

The King can't take the Queen because it is defended by the Rook, so, it is being checkmated.

Here is an instance where the King loses the right to castle.

5. Chess Notation: To note down what happens in a chess game, there are letters and numbers representing which piece does what to what square or something else. Each chess piece has it's own letter, each square on a standard chessboard has it's own name. Let's start with the squares on the board. On a standard chess board, there are 8 ranks and 8 files. A file is the vertical line, and a rank is a horizontal line. Each rank is represented from numbers 1-8, and each file is represented from a-h. Let's look at some images and an example of a square:

The orange arrows represent the ranks on a chess board

These orange arrows represent the files on a chess board.

This is an example of using rank numbers and file numbers to find a square. As seen by the arrows, the highlighted square is on the fourth rank, and is on the e file, which makes the square e4 (letter always comes first).

Let's move on to what letter represents each piece: These letters are different from the letters on the files. Pawns do not have letter, instead you write the square they move to, Knight=n, Bishop=b, Rook=r, Queen=Q, King=K.

Let's take a look at an example! If a knight moves to f3, what do we say? That's right!, nf3!

But what happens when a piece takes another piece??

If a piece takes another, we use the letter 'x' between the piece letter and the square.

Let's take a look at an example! If a Bishop takes a random piece on d3, we say bxd3.

But what about pawns, you ask? What you do is, you say the file of where the pawn was before it took, then you put in the letter x, and the square your pawn was after it took said piece.

For example, if a pawn on the e file took a pawn on the d5 square, we would say exd5.

You also might be asking, what if the same pieces (e.g. a Rook) were looking at a square, and one moved onto that square? Then, you would either write down the file or rank the piece came from. Let's take a look at an example!

As we can see, both these Rooks look at the e1 square, and the one on the a file goes to e1. So how do we represent this in notation? We write down the letter of the piece, in this case r, then the file it came from, a, and then the square it moved to. So, this move would be rae1.

Let's move on to checks. When a piece is checking (attacking) the king, you add a '+' to the end of the move to signify it is a check. Example:

Here, the rook checks the king by moving to e1, which means that after re1, we add a + to show it was a check. So, this move is noted as re1+

Let's move on to the notation for saying checkmate. To say that you've checkmate your opponent by playing a move, you add a '#' to the end of your notation. Please remember that in notation, you do not add '+' for checkmate, only the '#'. Example:

The Queen goes to e2, so we would say qe2, but, since it is also checkmate, we also ad '#' to the end of the notation to signify checkmate, so this would be qe2#.

6. Chess Principles (things you should do): In chess, there are a few key principles that you (usually) have to follow to win the game. They will be noted here:

Develop your pieces (Bring them out of their starting squares)
Control the center (the following squares: e4, e5, d4, d5)
Keep your king safe (Castle it, put it behind pawns, don't bring it into the center in the opening/middlegame)
Make improvements (don't lose pieces for no reason, try to make your position better)
Have a purpose (Every move you make must have a purpose and a reason why you did it)
If you are starting an attack, do it with more than 1-2 pieces
Always think why your opponent made that move, and what they want
If you are losing, don't resign/stall/etc. Keep playing, and look for counterplay
Don't develop your queen early, do it later on to avoid losing a tempo
Don't make bad moves (this should be obvious)

7. Stages in chess: In chess, there are always 3 stages of the game; The Opening, the Middlegame, and the Endgame. The Opening is the first 10-15 moves, where you can study common moves and learn from others, as they have been played before. Each opening has it's own strategies, but can sometimes merge into another opening if you play a specific move. The middlegame is where a new position has been created and you step out of the opening. Here, you try to advance and start an attack, or trade pieces, or improve, etc. etc. The endgame is where a lot of the pieces have been traded off, lost, or are all gone, where only pawns are left. This is where pawns become very powerful because they can promote into queens and win the game for you. But, the endgame could result in a draw as well, either because of a stalemate or a repetition.

8. How to win the game, how to lose the game, and how to draw the game: In chess, there are 3 outcomes you can have; Win, Draw, Loss. There are many ways to get these, so let's take a look!

How to win: You can win by checkmate (discussed earlier, visit section 3 to see what it means), by resignation (when your opponent resigns, as in they give up), abandonment, (when they leave or their internet shuts down), death (if your opponent dies), timeout (when your opponent runs out of time.

How to lose: You get checkmated, you resign, you abandon the game, you finish your time (timeout), you die.

How to draw: Stalemate (when you have no legal moves to make, this is especially good if you are completely losing but get a draw because of stalemate), agreement (you and your opponent both agree for a draw), timeout vs. insufficient material (your opponent runs out of time, but you don't win because you don't have enough pieces+pawns to checkmate them).

9. Types of chess moves: In chess, there are many types of moves to say if your move is good or bad. There are 11 types of chess moves. Here they are, and what they mean from worst to best:

Forced: The only legal move in a position
Blunder: A really bad move, losing the game
Mistake: A bad move, loses a bit of material
Miss: A move that caused you not to capitalise on your opponent's mistake
Inaccuracy: Isn't a completely bad move, but might lose you a good position or material
Book: An opening move
Good: Isn't a bad move, but it gives a small bit of advantage to your opponent
Excellent: A good move that doesn't lose you advantage (most of the time) but isn't as good as the best move
Best: The move the computer recommends
Great: The only move in a critical position
Brilliant: A move in very critical position that often involves giving away material, but helps you win.

10. Glossary (words you probably didn't know here, also, these are not in alphabetical order): Orthogonal: In a straight line, Check: When your king gets attacked by another piece, checkmate: When you get checked but cannot block the check, move over, or take the checking piece, material: The number of points/pieces.