

Notice how the white queen captures the black queen and then the black king is forced to move. She can move in any one straight direction - forward, backward, sideways, or diagonally - as far as possible as long as she does not move through any of her own pieces.Īnd, like with all pieces, if the queen captures an opponent's piece her move is over. When the king is attacked by another piece this is called "check". The king may never move himself into check (where he could be captured). The king can only move one square in any direction - up, down, to the sides, and diagonally. The king is the most important piece, but is one of the weakest. Pieces are generally moved into positions where they can capture other pieces (by landing on their square and then replacing them), defend their own pieces in case of capture, or control important squares in the game. However, they can be moved to take the place of an opponent's piece which is then captured. Pieces cannot move through other pieces (though the knight can jump over other pieces), and can never move onto a square with one of their own pieces. Recommended Tool -> Train your vision of the boardĮach of the 6 different kinds of pieces moves differently. Set up the pieces at the beginning of the game will be really easy. The rooks go in the corners, then the knights next to them, followed by the bishops, and finally the queen, who always goes on her own matching color (white queen on white, black queen on black), and the king on the remaining square. The second row (or rank) is filled with pawns.

The chess pieces are then arranged the same way each time. Here's a video of IM Danny Rensch explaining all the rules you need to know to start playing chess.Īt the beginning of the game the chessboard is laid out so that each player has the white (or light) color square in the bottom right-hand side.
#En passant rule how to
So in the conclusion en passant was made to make the game chess quicker.It's never too late to learn how to play chess-the most popular game in the world! Learning the rules of chess is easy: Asian chess variants, because of their separation from European chess prior to that period, do not feature any of these moves. Specifically, the rule allows a pawn on a player's fifth rank the opportunity to capture the opponent's pawn on an adjacent file that advances two squares on its first move as though it had advanced only one square (Davidson 1949:16). The motivation for en passant was to prevent the newly added two-square first move for pawns from allowing a pawn to evade capture by an enemy pawn. In most places the en passant rule was adopted as soon as the rule allowing the pawn to move two squares on its first move, but it was not universally accepted until the Italian rules were changed in 1880 (Hooper & Whyld 1992:124–25). Spanish master Ruy López de Segura gives the rule in his 1561 book Libro de la invención liberal y arte del juego del axedrez (Golombek 1977:108). When and why did this come to be?Īllowing the en passant capture is one of the last major rule changes in European chess that occurred between 12, together with the introduction of the two-square first move for pawns, castling, and the unlimited range for queens and bishops (Davidson 1949:14,16,57). It seems a little odd to me that someone thought that such a "different" move was so important to include in the legal moves.

Other than castling, the only "strange" move that chess pieces can ever make is en passant.
