You’ve probably heard of chess because of its massive popularity, and it’s popular for a good reason. Chess originated as a board game with an 8×8 board, but recently, it’s been able to be played online with devices like a phone.
Chess is a 2-player game where at the start, you or your opponent decides whether to play the black or the white pieces. There are 32 chess pieces which you use for a game with each you and your opponent starting with 16 pieces, whoever is white starts with the white pieces and whoever starts with black gets the black pieces with the player who has the white pieces going first. You can’t make pieces move over pieces. At the start of the game, you and your opponent place your pieces on the board in the places they always start on which would look like this.
Each player gets eight pieces called pawns which can only move up 1 unless it’s their first move where they can move either 1 up or 2 up but when taking your opponent’s pieces they can only take by a piece being one diagonal from where if you take that piece the pawn moves to the spot where the piece was, the pawn can only move ford on the board and when reaching the opposite end from where they started they can turn into any piece, the white pawns start on a2, b2, c2, d2, e2, f2, g2 and h2, the black pawns start on a7, b7, c7, d7, e7, f7, g7 and h7. Each player starts with two pieces called bishops, which can move diagonally in any direction. The white bishops start on c1 and f1, the black bishops start on c8 and f8. Each player starts with two pieces called knights which can move in an L shape being like up, down left or right two then 1 to the left or right if you went two up or down before or one up or down if you went two left or right, a move from a knight will be something like from A3 to C4. The knight is the only piece that can move over other pieces. The black knights start on b8 and g8, the white knights start on b1 and g1. Each player starts with two pieces called rooks, which can move any number of spaces vertically or horizontally. The black rooks start on a8 and h8, the white rooks start on a1 and h1. Each player starts with one piece called the queen; the queen can move either like a bishop or like a rook, depending on where you choose to move it on your turn. The queen is the 2nd most valuable piece on the board because it helps the most with you checkmating your opponent’s king. The black queen starts on d8, the white queen starts on d1. Each player starts with one piece called the king, the king is the most valuable piece because if it’s put in a position where you can’t prevent it from being taken it is called checkmate and you lose, when the king is being attacked and there is a way to save it you have to do that. The king can move 1 in any direction which makes it the 2nd worst piece for moving, the king can also do a move called castling which you need a rook which hasn’t moved from its starting place and your king to have not moved out of its starting place to do, to castle you need no pieces between your rook and king which haven’t moved, when you do this move you move your king 2 to the left or right depending on if your doing it with your rook on the left or the right with you moving the king right two if your using it with your rook on the right or left two if your using it with your rook on the left, then you move the rook over the king and put the rook next to the king. The black king starts on e8, and the white king starts on e1. Chess is a complicated game overall, but a very fun one to play when you’re bored.