Board setup
Chess is played on an 8 by 8 board. White moves first, then players alternate one move at a time. Each side starts with one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns.
White begins on ranks 1 and 2; Black begins on ranks 8 and 7. Queens start on their own color: White queen on d1, Black queen on d8. On your turn, choose one of your pieces and move it to a legal square. You cannot land on your own piece. If you land on an enemy piece, you capture it and remove it from the board.
Pieces, captures, and blockers
Each piece has its own movement shape. Highlighted squares below are legal destinations or captures from the pictured position.
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: moves forward toward the opponent side of the board into empty squares. From its starting rank, it may move one or two squares if the path is empty. Pawns capture one square diagonally forward, not straight ahead.
A capture happens when your piece moves to a square occupied by an enemy piece. Your piece stays on that square, and the captured piece leaves the board.
Kings, queens, rooks, bishops, and pawns cannot move through occupied squares. Queens, rooks, and bishops are called sliding pieces because they move along lines until the line is blocked. Knights are the exception: a knight jumps directly to its destination.
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. This is one of the biggest changes in Fog of War chess: there is no check or checkmate warning, and the game ends only when a king is captured on the board.
Special moves
You do not need to memorize every special case before your first game. These rules are here so the board makes sense when they appear.
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. Most players choose a queen because it is usually strongest.
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 and other endings
Some chess games end without a winner. Common regular-chess draws include stalemate, threefold repetition, the 50-move rule, agreement, and positions where checkmate is impossible.
Mistboard Fog of War keeps the automatic draw ideas that matter for live play: repeated true positions and a no-progress clock. Checkmate-based endings change because Fog of War is decided by king capture.
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.
Next: Fog of War chess
This page covers regular chess. Fog of War chess uses the same piece movement, then hides enemy pieces outside your vision and replaces checkmate with direct king capture.
If the movement rules above feel familiar enough, the Dark Chess rules article is the next step.