History of Chess
Chess is one of the oldest recorded games in human history. Despite some small rule changes that have taken place, most over hundreds of years ago, the game has remained mostly constant.
Historically, it's been argued who invented Chess, where, and at when. One of the oldest recorded games I could find was Abu-Bakr Muhammed Ben Yahya as-Suli vs Abu’l- Faraj bin al-Muzaffar bin Sa’-id al-Lajlaj which happened around 1100 years ago.
There's more but since potentially illegally moves were played, it's been extrapolated on.
Chess is a simulated war game. The beauty of Chess is it's about as fair as a game can get, virtually no elements of luck are present, making your skill in this individual 'sport' very consistently produce results. No bad luck, no card draws, no RNG, no bad teammates, no crappy internet connections. So if you're tired of luck, lag, or bad teammates losing you games and what to sink your teeth into something more consistent, chess is for you.
In modern times, Chess has had substantial influence on geopolitical issues. It's been said that the match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky in 1973 truly impacted the negotiations during the cold war.
How to Play:
The object of the game is to place an inescapable attack on the opponents king. Placing a unit in a square that then attacks the king, the king is said to be in "Check".
On the opponent's next ply (half turn), he must use his turn to escape check. He escapes check by either:
1) Moving a piece in between the King and Check
2) Moving the king out of the line of fire of the check
3) Capturing the piece that put the King in Check.
It is illegal to make a move that exposes your king. For instance, if your Knight was in between your king and your opponent's bishop, moving the knight would be illegal as it exposes your king. Either the bishop needs to be moved, the bishop needs to be captured, an additional piece needs to be placed in between the king and the knight, or the king needs to move in order for that knight to legally move.
The game can end in 3 ways:
1) Checkmate, an opponent places the king into an attack that cannot legally be avoided.
2) Draw
a) Insufficient material. If neither player has enough material to legally checkmate, it's a draw. Example, if both players only had a king left, then neither one of you could force a checkmate.
b) Stalemate. If the player who's turn it is to move has no legal moves but IS NOT in check, the game is said to be a stalemate. This is scored as a draw. It does not matter if one player has substantially more material than the other (Say, a Queen, Two Rooks, and a Bishop vs. a King), if the player legally cannot make a move, but isn't in check, this is considered a draw.
c) Time vs. Insufficient Material. In most games of Chess, both players have a specific amount of time that they are allowed to use to play games. For example, a Blitz game may allow for 3 minutes total for each player to use as time to consider and make their moves. If the player who has sufficient material to win runs out of time AND the player with remaining time on the clock cannot win as they have insufficient material, it's scored as a draw.
3) Win on time "Flagging". If a player runs out of time, they lose. Provided they don't meet the exception posted above.
An Example
If it's black to move, black cannot legally move to H7 as it's attacked by the knight, nor G8 as it's attacked by pawn, nor G7 as it's attacked by the king. Black is not in check as nothing is directly attacking it. This is a draw.
How Do the Pieces Move?
Here you can find a good resource to learn how pieces move:
How They Move
The Bishop
The Pawn
The King
The Rook
The Knight
The Queen
Special Moves:
There are two special moves in particular added in Chess, that are legal, and are a tad counter-intuitive. Here are the rules.
Special Moves
En Passant
Castling
Basic Strategy
Okay, you know how the pieces move. How do I PLAY though?
The game can be broken down into three phases:
1) Opening Phase
2) Middle Game
3) End Game
Opening Phase: The goal at this time for each player is to rapidly develop their pieces. Each move should either aid to allow for the pieces which are stuck on the back rank to get into the action and fight. The most common moves are e4 and d4, as in, moving the pawn in front of the king or queen respectively. This fights for the center of the board, and allows for the pieces such as the bishop to escape.
Openings are largely a matter of taste. The two types of openings are Attacks and Defenses. Because White moves first, at the highest level of play (Read: after many many years of playing) white has an advantage. Thus, white's moves combine to form an "Attack" and black, going second, forms an appropriate "Defence"
The two most differing in flavors of openings are Traditional and Modern. Both are completely fine, both are played at the highest level of play. Traditional openings look to occupy the center of the board, whereas modern openings look to attack the center of the board.
The Centre of the Board
E4, E5, D4, and D5 make up the center four most squares of the 64 squared board. The reason we talk so much about the center of the board, is because owning the center gives the most mobility to your pieces. Logically, if your piece can move around more, it's a more useful and active piece than if it's stuck behind a bunch of pawns. Take a Knight for example.
A knight on E4 could move to the following squares legally: C3, C5, D6, D2, F6, F2, G5, and G3. So a knight on E4 has 8 legal moves.
Pretend a knight were instead on H1. The knight then could legally move to: G3 and F2. Two legal moves. This knight really is only 25% as useful as it could be.
Phase 2: The Middle Game
The middle game is loosely defined as the time at which both players have adequately moved all their pieces. In Yasser Seirwan's terms, a player has finished developing when:
a) The king is castled
b) All pieces other than the rooks are off the back rank
c) The rooks now can attack themselves (they are connected)
In the middle game, you'll look to fight for some sort of advantage. Maybe you want to secure specific squares (such as all the Dark Squares), perhaps you want to secure a certain side of the board (such as the opponent's King side). This is the meat and potatoes of chess. Once one player has some sort of true tangible advantage, such as having more material (Knights, Bishops, Queens, etc.), they usually push to either:
a) Trade material - If you have one more rook than your opponent does, perhaps you want to trade pieces. You'll look for times when you can trade his bishop for your bishop, his knight for your knight, etc. etc. In doing so successfully, you'll have a very easy to win end game where you have a Rook and some pawns, and he only has pawns.
b) Check mate - Perhaps you have too many attackers in the vicinity of his king than he can stop. In which case, usually sacrificing material to cause an indefensible hole in his King's Defence is the way to go.
Phase 3: End Game
This is defined as the time where the King is most active. Usually, you want to bring your king to the center of the board, as he's very useful in snatching up Pawns. Since pawns can turn into queens if they reach the end of the board, usually the player with a pawn promoting to a queen will easily win the game.
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Now you know how to play, where can I play?
I recommend Chess.com. The reason is they have great tools such as tactic trainers to help you get better. Lichess.org is also widely used.
You can also play over the board chess and have an official rating. Who knows? Maybe you'll qualify to one day be a Grandmaster. I'm a USCF (United States Chess Federation) player myself, so I compete over the board at official USCF events to obtain higher rating.
Have fun
If you have questions, post here, if you want to leave your username to a website, post here. If you wanna talk chess, post here.
my username on lichess.org is cocacobra and you can send challenges by username
wouldn't say im good enough to put any known tactics to use but i like to play
Cool beans. I'll probably post examples of the different tactical motifs people can look for in their games when I have a second. Like pins, skewers, etc.
*Edit*
Tactics!
Okay so Tactics are how you win material in Chess. Some are very simple to spot, some can be quite difficult. The easiest of which would be something like a hanging piece, where your opponent simply places material directly in your line of fire to take without consequence. Unfortunately, your opponents won't always do that. So I'll post some Tactics for you to see.
Hanging Piece
Super simple. Someone put a piece where it it's under direct attack with no defender. White will lose his bishop for free.
The Pin
A pin is when you attack material of lower value; however, it cannot move or you'll take the more valuable material behind it. This can also be called a "relative pin".
Example:
The Queen on G2 is now attacking the Knight on C6. There aren't any defenders for that Knight, so the Queen could take the knight for free. If black were to move his knight to B4, then the Queen would capture the rook on A8! Now, if it weren't White to move, black could move his other knight to defend by placing it on F7.
An absolute pin is when it's legally impossible to move the piece. Observe this position that comes from the Ruy Lopez opener:
Notice, Black's Knight CANNOT move. It is illegal. Doing so would mean the white bishop can attack the King directly, which is not allowed. Of course, in this situation, as is in the Ruy Lopez opening, taking the Bishop just means the pawn will take the Bishop back, so not much will be gained from this tactic as it looks in this picture.
The Skewer
The skewer, is the opposite of a Pin. Now, we attack the more valuable piece, and if it moves away, it's weaker material counterpart can fall. Much like pins, there are absolute and relative pins. Same philosophy.
Here, white is attacking the King, so he must move. Doing so, means White will take the Queen. Winning an easy end game.
The Fork
The fork is when you're attacking two pieces at once. Again, you can be checking your opponent in a fork to alter the strength and success of the fork. In this example, the Pawn is attacking both the bishop and the knight. Whichever moves, the pawn will take the other. If the bishop takes white's pawn, white will recover the bishop with his queen.
But to see tons of Tactics, their names, and how to do it in action, check out this free resource:
I think that chess has become more interesting now that i'm actually attempting to play it. I always used to pretend to be a chess pro as kind of an ironic joke but now i'm really starting to get into it.
My aunt has 2 great big personalities (boobies), and i love playing with them all night long
Used to play quite a bit of chess when my uni's chess club was still around. Never played particularly well, since I'd pretty much always use an irregular opening, usually a rook's pawn opening. Was great fun though.
nyan :3 Youtube Channel i sometimes post videos of other games
That's called Castling, and it's not quite what you think.
There's a few conditions that have to be met first. First, you can't have moved your king or the rook you're going to castle with up to that point. Second, your king can't be under check, or be placed in check when it castles. Lastly, there can't be anything between the king and the rook you will castle with.
Assuming all the conditions are met, you can castle. The way you castle is you move the king two spaces towards the rook, then you move the rook on to the other side of the king. This can be done with king side or queen side rook, but it's more commonly done on king side rook because you only need to move 2 pieces to enable it.
nyan :3 Youtube Channel i sometimes post videos of other games