Board setup
Chess is played on an 8 by 8 board of alternating light and dark squares.
White moves first, then players alternate. Each side fills the two rows nearest it, with the queen starting on her own color. On your turn, move one piece to a legal square: you cannot land on your own piece, and landing on an enemy piece captures it, removing it from the board.
The pieces
Each piece moves in its own way. In every diagram below, the highlighted squares are the legal moves and captures for the marked white piece.
King: moves one square in any direction. In regular chess, a king may not move onto a square attacked by the opponent.
Queen: moves any number of squares horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. Other pieces block her path.
Rook: moves any number of squares horizontally or vertically. It cannot jump, so the first occupied square in a line stops it.
Bishop: moves any number of squares diagonally. Because diagonals stay on one color, each bishop stays on light squares or dark squares for the whole game.
Knight: moves in an L shape: two squares one way and one square sideways. The knight is the only piece that jumps over other pieces.
Pawn: the pawn moves and captures differently from every other piece. It moves straight forward into an empty square, one square at a time, or two squares from its starting position. It can never move backward or sideways, and a piece directly in front of it blocks it completely. It captures only diagonally forward, one square (the green rings below), never straight ahead. Two further pawn rules, promotion and en passant, appear under Special moves below.
Check and checkmate
In regular chess, the king is protected by check and checkmate. A king is in check when an enemy piece attacks it. The checked player must make a legal move that leaves the king safe.
Most checks are answered in one of three ways: move the king, block the line of attack, or capture the attacking piece. If none of those legal answers works, the game ends by checkmate.
In regular chess the king is never actually captured: the game ends at checkmate, with the king still on the board.
Special moves
Castling
Castling is a one-move king-and-rook move. The king moves two squares toward a rook, and that rook moves to the square the king crossed. In regular chess, the pieces must be unmoved, the path must be empty, and the king cannot castle out of, through, or into check.
Queenside castling works the same way on the other side: the king moves two squares toward the rook, and the rook lands next to it.
Promotion
When a pawn reaches the farthest rank, it promotes into a queen, rook, bishop, or knight.
En passant
En passant is the unusual pawn capture. If an enemy pawn moves two squares from its starting rank and lands beside your pawn, your pawn may capture it diagonally as if it had moved only one square. This chance exists only on the very next move.
Draws
Not every game is won. Some end in a draw, where neither side wins.
Stalemate
Stalemate is when the player to move has no legal move but their king is not in check. It is a draw, not a win, even if one side is far ahead. Below it is Black to move: the king on a8 is not in check, yet every square it could step to is covered by the white queen, and Black has nothing else to move. The game is drawn.
Other draws
Threefold repetition: the same position, with the same player to move, occurs three times. Either player can then claim a draw.
Fifty-move rule: fifty moves by each side pass with no capture and no pawn move. The clock resets whenever a pawn moves or a piece is taken.
Insufficient material: neither side has enough force to deliver checkmate, such as king versus king, or king and a lone bishop or knight against a bare king.
Agreement: both players simply agree to a draw.
A famous game
To see the pieces work together in a real game, step through Game 11 of the 2014 World Championship in Sochi. Playing White, Magnus Carlsen grinds down Viswanathan Anand in a Berlin endgame to clinch the title; Anand resigns on move 45.
Where to next
Chess is the open-information base game. Add Fog of War for Fog Chess, where enemy pieces outside your vision disappear and the king falls by capture.