Chess rules

• How to play chess
• Chess pieces and positions on the board
• Chess moves
• Pawn movement
• Start of the match
• End of the match
• Check and checkmate
• Castling
• Pawn’s promotion
• Chess rooms
• Prizes, chips and points
• History of chess

How to play chess

Chess is a game that puts 2 players against each other in a 8x8 board made of black and white squares (or of any other color if the board has a special design). It’s played through alternating turns and the goal is to capture your opponent’s king piece in a move called checkmate.

Chess pieces and positions on the board

Each player is in charge of 16 pieces at the start of the match, one of the players will control the white pieces, and the other one, the black pieces. These 16 are made of: a queen, a king, two knights, two rooks, two bishops and eight pawns.

Chess moves

Each piece can be moved differently and these can’t move through squares that are blocked by other pieces, except for the knight, which can “jump” through all the other pieces. If they end in a square occupied by an opponent’s piece, that piece will be captured and the piece move ends.

These are the moves that each piece can do:

• King: can move one square in all directions: vertically, horizontally and diagonally.
• Queen: can move several squares (if the path isn’t blocked by other pieces) in any direction.
• Knight: its move is similar to a “L”, moves two squares in a particular direction and ends by moving an extra one in a 90 degrees turn at the end of those two squares. It can “jump” through pieces.
• Bishop: can move several squares (if the path isn’t blocked by other pieces) diagonally. As a consequence, it can only move through squares of the same color of the square that it starts the match.
• Rook: can move several squares (if the path isn’t blocked by other pieces) horizontally or vertically.
• Pawn: explained on the next paragraphs due to the several options available.

Pawn movement

The pawn follows these next rules:

• It move generally a square forward vertically.
• If it didn’t move yet it can move 2 squares in one go.
• Captures are done only diagonally, moving a square forward and to the side.
• There’s a particular move called en passant that happens only when a pawn is on its fifth row. If an opponent’s pawn moves 2 squares in its turn, it’s possible to capture this piece by moving to the position shown in the image.

Start of the match

Each player has in charge 16 pieces of a certain color and a part of the board where the match will start. The board has a total of 64 squares. The player with the white pieces does the first move. After that, each player has a turn to move one piece.

The pieces are distributed always in the same way:

• The first row is occupied by the rooks on the corners, next the knights and bishops, and then the king and queen in the middle of these, putting the white queen on the white square and the black queen on the black square.
• The second row is completely occupied with pawns.

End of the match

The match ends when:

• A player does a checkmate.
• The other player quits.
• The match ends in a draw when:
• The player cannot do any legal move and his king is not in check. This particular case is called a stalemate.
• When both players agree.
• The same position is repeated 3 times.
• 50 moves are done without any capture or pawn movement.
• When it’s impossible to do a checkmate due to lack of pieces. Some known examples are:
• • King vs king
  • King and knight vs king
  • King and bishop vs king
  • King and knight vs king and knight
  • Etc.

Check and checkmate

When a king is under a capture threat, it means that it’s in check. When said threat can’t be countered by blocking the check with another piece, capture the threating piece or move the king, this is known as checkmate.

Castling

This move allows to combine two actions in one: protect the king by taking it to a safe zone and position a rook in one side of the board. To do this, a certain set of conditions must be met:

• It must be the first move that the rook does.
• It must be the first move that the king does.
• There must not be any piece between the rook castling the king.
• The king cannot be in check, cannot end in check and neither cannot be in check in the squares between the move.

Pawn’s promotion

When the pawn reaches its eighth row, it’s promoted to any of these pieces that the player wishes: a queen, rook, bishop or knight.

Chess rooms

In the Casual Arena’s chess there are 3 rooms: Passport, Tourist and Priority, each of them with different kinds of bets. The first room, the Passport room, is accessible to all players. The remaining rooms (Tourist and Priority) are exclusive to VIP and Premium users. Click on the following link to play chess online.

Prizes, chips and points

This is the points distribution according to each result and room:

History of chess

Let’s put aside for a bit the chess rules and talk a bit about its history. Several theories try to explain the chess origins, but many of them agree that its origins are localized in India from more than 2.500 years ago and mention the antecessor of chess, chaturanga. It’s certain that it were the Arabs, in the 8th century the responsible for introducing this game in the Iberian Peninsula and the Spanish people in the 18th century in South America.