Chess Basics

During its thousands of years of history, chess has become known as the 'king' of board games. Several famous personalities were known for their chess skills. Napoleon, Nikola Tesla, Charlie Chaplin and Einstein among them.

Chess can provide many hours of pleasure and intellectual exercise. The game is reputed to improve analytical thinking, creativity and judgment.

In the past chess was mainly played by nobility. Now everyone can enjoy this privilege. Chess attracts people of all ages from all over the world. Chess is intriguing, for it allows players to pit their wits, experience and inspiration against a competitor.

The Battleground

All you need to play chess is a chessboard and chess pieces -- or if you wish to play online, you need nothing more than your computer. The chessboard is an 8"x 8" board with alternating black and white squares; nearly everyone is sure to have seen one.

There are 32 chess pieces in total; 16 white pieces and their 16 black counterparts. One player owns the white pieces (we call this player WHITE) and the opponent (BLACK) gets the black ones. The 16 pieces are: the King, the Queen, 2 Rooks, 2 Bishops, 2 Knights and 8 Pawns.

When the game starts these pieces are placed in predefined positions as follows: each player places his own pieces along the 2 closest rows of the board (called ranks). All 8 pawns are placed on the innermost rank of the 2. The rest of the pieces are placed closest to the player in this order: Rook, Knight, Bishop, Queen, King, Bishop, Knight, and Rook. This order is from left to right for WHITE and from right to left for BLACK, so that the same pieces are opposed on each column (called a file) of the board.

Chess Notation

To easily describe chess positions the 'algebraic chess notation' was invented. It works like this: viewing from WHITE's perspective, the leftmost file is designated 'a', the next one 'b' and so on until we reach the rightmost file, which is file 'h'. The rank that is closest to WHITE is 'rank 1'. Next comes 'rank 2' and so on until we get to the 8th rank, which is the rank closest to BLACK.

Now we may identify a square by looking up the rank and the file to which it belongs. Thus (still from WHITE's side) the bottom left square is the square 'a1', since it belongs to file 'a' and to the first rank. Its adjacent squares are 'b1' on the right and 'a2' just above it.

With that out of the way, the next major thing to know is the goal. Your sole purpose is to trap the enemy King -- it's that simple.

But that is a story for another day.