This article is about the Western board game.

For other chess games or other use

s, see Chess (disambiguation).
Chess A selection of black and white chess pieces on a chequered surface.
Part of a Staunton chess set (from left to right): a white king, a black rook, a
black queen, a white pawn, a black knight, and a white bishop
Years active
c. 6th-century India to present
Genre(s)
Mind sport
Board game
Abstract strategy game
Players
2
Setup time
~1 minute
Playing time
Casual games usually last 10 to 60 minutes; tournament games las
t anywhere from about ten minutes (blitz chess) to six hours or more.
Random chance None
Skill(s) required
Strategy, tactics
Synonym(s)
Western chess, international chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a checkered gameboard w
ith 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. Chess is played by millions o
f people worldwide, both amateurs and professionals.
Each player begins the game with 16 pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two
knights, two bishops, and eight pawns. Each of the six piece types moves differe
ntly. The most powerful piece is the queen and the least powerful piece is the p
awn. The objective is to 'checkmate' the opponent's king by placing it under an
inescapable threat of capture. To this end, a player's pieces are used to attack
and capture the opponent's pieces, while supporting their own. In addition to c
heckmate, the game can be won by voluntary resignation by the opponent, which ty
pically occurs when too much material is lost, or if checkmate appears unavoidab
le. A game may also result in a draw in several ways.
Chess is believed to have originated in India, some time before the 7th century;
the Indian game of chaturanga is also the likely ancestor of xiangqi, janggi an
d shogi. The pieces took on their current powers in Spain in the late 15th centu
ry; the rules were finally standardized in the 19th century.
The first generally recognized World Chess Champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, claimed h
is title in 1886. Since 1948, the World Championship has been controlled by FIDE
, the game's international governing body; the current World Champion is the Nor
wegian Magnus Carlsen. FIDE also organizes the Women's World Championship, the W
orld Junior Championship, the World Senior Championship the Blitz and Rapid Worl
d Championships and the Chess Olympiad, a popular competition among teams from d
ifferent nations. There is also a Correspondence Chess World Championship and a
World Computer Chess Championship.
Chess is a recognized sport of the International Olympic Committee;[1] some nati
onal sporting bodies such as the Spanish Consejo Superior de Deportes also recog
nize chess as a sport.[2] Chess was included in the 2006 and 2010 Asian Games.
Online chess has opened amateur and professional competition to a wide and varie
d group of players. There are also many chess variants, with different rules, di
fferent pieces, and different boards.
Since the second half of the 20th century, computers have been programmed to pla
y chess with increasing success, to the point where the strongest home computers
play chess at a higher level than the best human players. Since the 1990s, comp
uter analysis has contributed significantly to chess theory, particularly in the
endgame. The computer IBM Deep Blue was the first machine to overcome a reignin
g World Chess Champion in a match when it defeated Garry Kasparov in 1997. The r
ise of strong computer programs (known as "engines") which can be run on a hand-

held device has led to increasing concerns about cheating during tournaments.
Contents
1 Rules
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
1.6
1.7

Setup
Movement
Castling
En passant
Promotion
Check
End of the game
1.7.1 Win
1.7.2 Draw
1.8 Time control
2 Notation for recording moves
3 Strategy and tactics
3.1 Fundamentals of tactics
3.2 Fundamentals of strategy
4 Phases
4.1 Opening
4.2 Middlegame
4.3 Endgame
5 History
5.1 Predecessors
5.2 Origins of the modern game (1000 1850)
5.3 Birth of a sport (1850 1945)
5.4 Post-war era (1945 and later)
6 Place in culture
6.1 Pre-modern
6.2 Modern
7 Composition
7.1 Example
8 Competitive play
8.1 Organization of competitions
8.2 Titles and rankings
9 Publications
10 Mathematics and computers
11 Psychology
11.1 Chess and intelligence
12 Variants
13 Game theory
14 Controversy in religion
15 See also
16 References
17 Further reading
18 External links
Rules
a
b
8
Chessboard480.svg
a8 black rook
b8 black knight
c8 black bishop
d8 black queen
e8 black king
f8 black bishop
g8 black knight
h8 black rook

a7
b7
c7
d7
e7
f7
g7
h7
a2
b2
c2
d2
e2
f2
g2
h2
a1
b1
c1
d1
e1
f1
g1
h1

black pawn
black pawn
black pawn
black pawn
black pawn
black pawn
black pawn
black pawn
white pawn
white pawn
white pawn
white pawn
white pawn
white pawn
white pawn
white pawn
white rook
white knight
white bishop
white queen
white king
white bishop
white knight
white rook
8
7
7
6
6
5
5
4
4
3
3
2
2
1
1
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
Initial position, first row: rook, knight, bishop, queen, king, bishop, knight,
and rook; second row: pawns
Main article: Rules of chess
Setup at the start of a game
The official rules of chess are maintained by FIDE (Fdration Internationale des che
cs), chess's international governing body. Along with information on official ch
ess tournaments, the rules are described in the FIDE Handbook, Laws of Chess sec
tion.[3]
Setup
Chess is played on a square board of eight rows (called ranks and denoted
umbers 1 to 8) and eight columns (called files and denoted with letters a
of squares. The colors of the 64 squares alternate and are referred to as
" and "dark" squares. The chessboard is placed with a light square at the
hand end of the rank nearest to each player.

with n
to h)
"light
right-

By convention, the game pieces are divided into white and black sets, and the pl
ayers are referred to as "White" and "Black" respectively. Each player begins th
e game with 16 pieces of the specified color, which consist of one king, one que
en, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns. The pieces are set out
as shown in the diagram and photo, with each queen on a square of its own color
, the white queen on a light square and the black queen on a dark.
Movement
The player with the white pieces always moves first. After the first move, playe
rs alternately move one piece per turn (except for castling, when two pieces are

moved). Pieces are moved to either an unoccupied square or one occupied by an o

pponent's piece, which is captured and removed from play. With the sole exceptio
n of en passant, all pieces capture by moving to the square that the opponent's
piece occupies. A player may not make any move that would put or leave his or he
r king under attack. A player cannot "pass"; at each turn they have to make a le
gal move (this is the basis for the finesse called zugzwang). If the player to m
ove has no legal move, the game is over; it is either a checkmate (a loss for th
e player with no legal moves) if the king is under attack, or a stalemate (a dra
w) if the king is not.
Each chess piece has its own style of moving. In the diagrams, the dots mark the
squares where the piece can move if no other pieces (including one's own piece)
are on the squares between the piece's initial position and its destination.
Moves of a king
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
8
Chessboard480.svg
e6 black circle
f6 black circle
g6 black circle
e5 black circle
f5 white king
g5 black circle
e4 black circle
f4 black circle
g4 black circle
8
7
7
6
6
5
5
4
4
3
3
2
2
1
1
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
Moves of a rook
a
b
8
Chessboard480.svg
d8 black circle
d7 black circle
d6 black circle
a5 black circle
b5 black circle
c5 black circle
d5 white rook
e5 black circle
f5 black circle
g5 black circle
h5 black circle
d4 black circle
d3 black circle
d2 black circle
d1 black circle
8
7
7
6
6
5
5
4
4

3
2
1

3
2
1
a

Moves of a bishop
a
b
8
Chessboard480.svg
a8 black circle
g8 black circle
b7 black circle
f7 black circle
c6 black circle
e6 black circle
d5 white bishop
c4 black circle
e4 black circle
b3 black circle
f3 black circle
a2 black circle
g2 black circle
h1 black circle
8
7
7
6
6
5
5
4
4
3
3
2
2
1
1
a
b
Moves of a queen
a
b
8
Chessboard480.svg
d8 black circle
h8 black circle
a7 black circle
d7 black circle
g7 black circle
b6 black circle
d6 black circle
f6 black circle
c5 black circle
d5 black circle
e5 black circle
a4 black circle
b4 black circle
c4 black circle
d4 white queen
e4 black circle
f4 black circle
g4 black circle
h4 black circle
c3 black circle
d3 black circle
e3 black circle
b2 black circle
d2 black circle

f2
a1
d1
g1
7
6
5
4
3
2
1

black circle
black circle
black circle
black circle
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
a
b

Moves of a knight
a
b
8
Chessboard480.svg
c6 black circle
e6 black circle
b5 black circle
f5 black circle
d4 white knight
b3 black circle
f3 black circle
c2 black circle
e2 black circle
8
7
7
6
6
5
5
4
4
3
3
2
2
1
1
a
b
Moves of a pawn
a
b
8
Chessboard480.svg
d8 black cross
e8 black circle
f8 black cross
e7 white pawn
a5 black cross
b5 black circle
c5 black cross
b4 white pawn
f4 black circle
e3 black cross
f3 black circle
g3 black cross
f2 white pawn
8
7
7
6
6
5
5
4
4
3
3

2
1

2
1
a

The king moves one square in any direction. The king has also a special move
which is called castling and involves also moving a rook.
The rook can move any number of squares along any rank or file, but may not
leap over other pieces. Along with the king, the rook is involved during the kin
g's castling move.
The bishop can move any number of squares diagonally, but may not leap over
other pieces.
The queen combines the power of the rook and bishop and can move any number
of squares along rank, file, or diagonal, but it may not leap over other pieces.
The knight moves to any of the closest squares that are not on the same rank
, file, or diagonal, thus the move forms an "L"-shape: two squares vertically an
d one square horizontally, or two squares horizontally and one square vertically
. The knight is the only piece that can leap over other pieces.
The pawn may move forward to the unoccupied square immediately in front of i
t on the same file, or on its first move it may advance two squares along the sa
me file provided both squares are unoccupied (black "?"s in the diagram); or the
pawn may capture an opponent's piece on a square diagonally in front of it on a
n adjacent file, by moving to that square (black "x"s). The pawn has two special
moves: the en passant capture and pawn promotion.