How to Play Chess: Setup, Piece Movement, Captures & Checkmate
This guide covers orthodox chess under the FIDE Laws.
Set up the board
Each player starts with 16 pieces: eight pawns, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, one queen and one king. The back rank is rook, knight, bishop, queen, king, bishop, knight, rook, with the queen starting on her own color. Pawns fill the rank in front. White moves first.
How the pieces move
- King: one square in any direction, but never onto an attacked square.
- Queen: any number of unobstructed squares along a rank, file or diagonal.
- Rook: any number of unobstructed squares along a rank or file.
- Bishop: any number of unobstructed diagonal squares.
- Knight: an L-shaped move and may jump over pieces.
- Pawn: advances forward, with a two-square option from its starting position when unobstructed, and normally captures one square diagonally forward.
Check and checkmate
If your king is attacked, you are in check and must make a legal move that removes the attack. If no legal move can remove the check, it is checkmate and the game ends.
Special moves
Chess includes castling, en passant and pawn promotion.
Draws
Stalemate, dead positions, repetition and move-count rules can produce draws. See the checkmate and draw guide.