Chess For Dummies
Book image
Explore Book Buy On Amazon
Before you can play a game of chess, you need to know how to move the pieces (legally). A chess piece’s power is tied to its mobility. The more mobile a piece is, the more powerful it is. Here's how the various pieces can move:

  • Pawns: Pawns can only move forward. On their first move, they can move one or two squares. Afterwards, they can move only one square at a time. They can capture an enemy piece by moving one square forward diagonally. They can only move diagonally when capturing an enemy piece.

  • Bishops: Bishops can move any number of squares diagonally.

  • Knights: Knights can move only in an L-shape, one square up and two over, or two squares over and one down, or any such combination of one-two or two-one movements in any direction.

  • Rooks: Rooks can move any number of squares, up and down and side to side.

  • Queens: Queens can move any number of squares along ranks, files and diagonals.

  • Kings: Kings can move one square at a time in any direction.

    image0.jpg

About This Article

This article is from the book:

About the book author:

James Eade became a US Chess Federation Chess Master in 1981. International organizations awarded him the master title in 1990 (for correspondence) and in 1993 (for regular tournament play). Today, he writes about and teaches chess.

This article can be found in the category:

This article is part of the collection(s):