Most of the international chess tournaments follow a set of common rules. These rules do not necessarily be followed when we are playing the game at home or online but these rules must be followed by tournament chess players. People who are playing at home or for leisure purposes can use economy chess pieces to. Chess is a game of strategy believed to have been invented more then 1500 years ago in India. It is a game for two play- ers, one with the light pieces and one with the dark pieces. The chessboard is eight squares long by eight squares wide.
Chess is recognized as a CLASSIC Chess variant, distinguished for its immense popularity and rich history.The highest level of recognition, only three games are rated as Classic: Chess, Xiangqi (Chinese Chess), and Shogi (Japanese Chess).
Chess is a game, played by two players. One player plays with the whitepieces, and the other player plays with the black pieces. Each player hassixteen pieces in the beginning of the game: one king, one queen, two rooks,two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns.
The game is played on a chessboard, consisting of 64 squares: eightrows and eight columns. The squares are alternately light (white) and darkcolored. The board must be laid down such that there is a black squarein the lower-left corner. To facilitate notation of moves, all squaresare given a name. From the view of the white player, the rows are numbered1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8; the lowest row has number 1, and the upper rowhas number 8. The columns are named, from left to right, a, b, c, d, e,f, g, h. A square gets a name, consisting of the combination of its column-letterand row-number, e.g., the square in the lower left corner (for white) isa1.
black
white
Alternately, the players make a move, starting with the white player(the player that plays with the white pieces.) A move consists of movingone of the pieces of the player to a different square, following the rulesof movement for that piece - there is one special exception, named castling,where players move two pieces simultaneously.
A player can take a piece of the opponent by moving one of hisown pieces to the square that contains a piece of the opponent. The opponentspiece then is removed from the board, and out of play for the rest of thegame. (Taking is not compulsory.)
At the start of the game, the position of the pieces is as follows.
Thus, at the second row, there are eight white pawns, at the seventhrow, there are eight black pawns. At the first row, from left to right,we have a: rook, knight, bishop, queen, king, bishop, knight, and rook.Note that the queens start of squares of their own color, with a dark squarein each players left hand corner.
Movement of the piecesRook
The rook moves in a straight line, horizontally or vertically. The rookmay not jump over other pieces, that is: all squares between the squarewhere the rook starts its move and where the rook ends its move must beempty. (As for all pieces, when the square where the rook ends his movecontains a piece of the opponent, then this piece is taken. The squarewhere the rook ends his move may not contain a piece of the player owningthis rook.)
Bishop
The bishop moves in a straight diagonal line. The bishop may also notjump over other pieces.
Queen
The queen has the combined moves of the rook and the bishop,i.e., the queen may move in any straight line, horizontal, vertical, ordiagonal.
Knight
The knight makes a move that consists of first one step in a horizontalor vertical direction, and then one step diagonally in an outward direction. The knight jumps:it is allowed that the first square that the knight passes over is occupiedby an arbitrary piece. For instance, white can start the game by movinghis knight from b1 to c3. The piece that is jumped over is further notaffected by the knight: as usual, a knight takes a piece of the opponentby moving to the square that contains that piece.
Pawn
The pawn moves differently regarding whether it moves to an empty squareor whether it takes a piece of the opponent. When a pawn does not take,it moves one square straight forward. When this pawn has not moved at all,i.e., the pawn is still at the second row (from the owning players view),the pawn may make a double step straight forward. For instance, a whitepawn on d2 can be moved to d4.
When taking, the pawn goes one square diagonally forward.
There is one special rule, called taking en-passant.When a pawn makes a double step from the second row to the fourth row, and there is an enemy pawn on anadjacent square on the fourth row, then this enemy pawn inthe next move may move diagonally to the squarethat was passed over by the double-stepping pawn, which is on the third row. In this same move, thedouble-stepping pawn is taken.This taking en-passant must be done directly: ifthe player who could take en-passant does not do this in the first moveafter the double step, this pawn cannot be taken anymore by an en-passantmove.
A double pawn step, and a following en-passant capture
Pawns that reach the last row of the board promote. When a playermoves a pawn to the last row of the board, he replaces the pawn by a queen,rook, knight, or bishop (of the same color). Usually, players will promotethe pawn to a queen, but the other types of pieces are also allowed. (Itis not required that the pawn is promoted to a piece taken. Thus, it isfor instance possible that a player has at a certain moment two queens.)
Before and after a promotion
King
The king moves one square in any direction, horizontally, vertically,or diagonally. There is one special type of move, made by a king and rooksimultaneously, called castling: see below.
The king is the most important piece of the game, and moves must bemade in such a way that the king is never in check: see below.
Castling
Under certain, special rules, a king and rook can move simultaneouslyin a castling move.
The following conditions must be met:
When castling, the king moves two squares towards the rook, and therook moves over the king to the next square, i.e., black's king on e8 androok on a8 move to: king c8, rook d8 (long castling), white's kingon e1 and rook on h1 move to: king g1, rook f1 (short castling).
position before and after castling: white short, and black long
Neither white nor black may castle: white is in check, and theblack king may not move over d8
Check, mate, and stalemateCheck
When the king of a player can be taken by a piece of the opponent, onesays that the king is in check. For instance, the white player moveshis rook to a position such that it attacks the black king, i.e., if blackdoesn't do anything about it, the rook could take the black king in thenext move: we say that the white rook gives check. It is consideredgood manners to say check when one checks ones opponent.
It is not allowed to make a move, such that ones king is in check afterthe move. If a player accidently tries to make such a move, he must take themove back and make another move (following the rules that one must move withthe piece one has touched, see below.)
Mate
When a player is in check, and he cannot make a move such that afterthe move, the king is not in check, then he is mated. The playerthat is mated lost the game, and the player that mated him won the game.
Note that there are three different possible ways to remove a check:
Stalemate
When a player cannot make any legal move, but he is not in check, thenthe player is said to be stalemated. In a case of a stalemate, thegame is a draw.
When black must move, the game is a stalemate Other rulesResign and draw proposals
A player can resign the game, which means that he has lost and his opponenthas won.
After making a move, a player can propose a draw: his opponent can acceptthe proposal (in which case the game ends and is a draw) or refuse theproposal (in which case the game continues).
Repetition of moves
If the same position with the same player to move is repeated threetimes in the game, the player to move can claim a draw. (When the rightto make a certain castling move is lost by one of the players between positions,then the positions are considered to be different. For the fine pointsof this rule, see the official rules of chess.)
One case where the repetition of move occurs is when a player continues togive check forever. See an explanation with animatedgif.
50 moves rules
If there are have been 50 consecutive moves of white and of black without
then a player can claim a draw. For the fine points of this rule, seethe official rules of chess.
Touching pieces
When a player touches one of his own pieces, he must, if possible, makea legal move with this piece. When a player touches a piece of the opponent,he must, if possible, take this piece.
Chess clocks and time
Often, players play the game with chess clocks. These clocks count thetime that each player separately takes for making his own moves. Additionalrules are then used, saying how many (possibly all) moves must be madebefore a player has used a certain time for his moves. For details, seethe official rules of chess.
Other rules
There are other rules, telling what should happen in special occasions,like that players started the game with a wrong setup, etc. These are notso important for friendly games; for details, again see the official rulesof chess.
Unsure about the rules of chess?Check our
ShopWritten by: Hans Bodlaender. With thanks to: Henk Penning, for suggestingto make this WWW page, and several others for noting errors or suggestions.WWW page created: May 9, 1996. Last modified: June 23, 2000.
Most chess players know the fundamental training rules. In order to improve at chess, they need to play more games, solve tactics, work with the books, and so on. Ironically, following the rules without good understanding may be something that prevents them from reaching new heights. Chess masters know very well that oftentimes breaking training rules will help a player much more than blindly following them.
Rule 1: Playing more games will take you to the next level
How many times have we all heard that playing more games is something that will help you to improve at chess?
Surprisingly, many chess player believe in that and spend hours and hours on online chess platforms. There are even some 2200+ players that claim that they reach the master’s level by simply playing chess.
It is indeed possible for some, but definitely not the case for majority of the chess players. It is much easier to find a 1200 rated player with 15,000 games history rather than a 2200+ player who just plays and never studies. Strong players know that it is not necessarily important how many games you have played, but what matters is the quality of those games. Playing a single two hours long game against a challenging opponent will do a lot more for your chess than the whole month of online blitz.
The best approach for those who wants to improve is to combine classical training methods with serious, long-time control games. Remember, it is always quality over quantity that can take you to the next level.
Rule 2: Tactics is the key to winning chess games
The most common advice that is given to players when they ask “how to improve at chess” is “to solve tactics”. It is hard to disagree that tactics plays a major role in the game. Many of the games are decided one or another way because of tactics. Some chess players take tactics training to the extreme, and spend all of their chess time solving tactics.
Needless to say, this is not a very optimal approach.
There are other very important elements of chess that one needs to master, in order to become a stronger player. These are endgames, positional understanding, attacking chess, planning, and opening preparation. It is a good idea to cover all of these in your training sessions, rather than just focusing one or two.
Rule 3: Staying consistent with your training methods is a must
It is indeed important to consistently work on your chess. However, using the same training methods month after month and year after year without seeing any significant progress is not very efficient.
I would like to demonstrate this concept using the “wet towel” analogy. If you have a bunch of wet towels and you need to collect water, you can approach this task in different ways. You can take one towel and squeeze 30% of the water out. It is not very hard. Then you can squeeze some more water and add another 5-10%. Now it’s becoming more difficult and you need to exert a lot more effort and spend far more time to get water from this towel. You can keep trying hard to squeeze more water out of that towel, and maybe if you use all of your creativity, you’ll be able to add a few more drops. Or you can simply take another towel and squeeze another 30% in no time.
The idea I’m trying to show to you is very simple. If one training method stopped working, it is not efficient to work harder trying to add another 5-10 elo points to your rating. It is far better to change training routine and start adding 50-100 elo points instead.
Rule 4: Diversity of chess resources is a key to success
Many chess players prefer to have 10-20 different chess books and to work on them simultaneously. It is not a good approach. It may be very time consuming to keep track of all of the materials and to understand and apply the new knowledge in your games.
It is usually a better idea to work on one or two different sources at a time. That way you can really focus on the material and understand the author’s ideas and philosophy in greater depth. When choosing what books to study, you should aim for practical advice instead of a purely theoretical knowledge.
Rule 5: Long training sessions will make you a better player
Many chess players want to identify the most optimal duration of their training. There is no secret formula that derives the length of perfect training session. It is far more important to focus on quality of training and consistency of the lessons rather than on duration of a single lesson.
As a general suggestion, I recommend having multiple shorter training sessions throughout the week, rather than packing everything into the single 5 hour long session. Longer sessions are usually less efficient in terms of learning and keeping motivation.
That’s why in our 21 days training course we have separated the material into the chewable bites which would take you about one hour a day to digest. In our experience that is the best approach for chess training.
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