Need a refresher on what the pieces, moves, and notation are for chess? Or maybe you never knew them in the first place. No matter! This page will help you either way.
And while I have your attention, be sure to come back to this page and keep the terminology fresh in your mind. Apparently, studies have shown that verbal skill (in particular, the ability to think about and describe what the state of the board is in language terms) is one of the strongest correlates to chess-playing strength that scientists have found.
Without further ado, here are the concepts and terms for you to keep top-of-mind:
Algebraic game notation
Take a look at the picture below. You will see that there are numbers and letters inscribed on the side of the board. These letter-number combinations, when combined with the abbreviations for pieces, are used to represent which piece moves where when notating a chess game.
The abbreviations for the game pieces are as follows (notice the letters are capitalized):
N = knight
B = bishop
R = rook
Q = queen
K = king
When moving pawns (but not capturing), it is generally enough to simply note the destination square, since only one pawn of any color can move into any square at any time. You may want to reread that last sentence a couple times...
Here are some special characters you will need for complete notation. If you don't know what the long form terms mean, you can find them below.
'x' is used to communicate "captures"
'+' stands for "check"
'#' stands for "checkmate"
'e.p.' is used when a pawn captures en passant
'[pawn move]Q' is used to communicate a pawn promotion, in this case to a queen
'0-0' (those are two zeros) stands for the king-side (also called "short side") castle move
'0-0-0' (three zeros) stands for the queen-side (also called "long side") castle move
And last but not least:
1-0 means "white wins"
0-1 means "black wins"
1/2 - 1/2 means "draw" a.k.a the game was tied
Rank & File
Very simple: ranks are the rows (1 - 8) and files are the columns (a - h) of a chess board. You start with the file and then rank when writing or naming the square you want to reference. Looking at that picture above again, we can say that white's king is still on its starting square, e1.
Example Moves
Below are some example moves in notation, and then in English. The number that starts the line is the turn in the game, and the moves are always listed white move first, then black move second.
11. 0-0 Nb3
(Turn 11. White castles king-side. Black moves their knight to the b3 square.)
20. h8Q fxe3e.p.
(Turn 20. White moves a pawn to square h8 and promotes it to a queen. Black's pawn on the f file captures the pawn on e3 en passant.)
7. Ng7+ Rde1
(Turn 7. White moves knight to g7 and puts black king in check. Black moves the rook on the d file to e1. Notice there must be another black rook that can reach e1, so the moved rook's starting file had to be listed for disambiguation.)
17. 0-0-0 1-0
(Turn 17. White castles queen-side. Then white wins. Notice that there is no '#' checkmate symbol on the final white move, so it cannot be a checkmate win. Black must have resigned.)
Pieces
There are six kinds of game pieces in chess: pawns, knights, bishops, rooks, queens, and kings. Typically, you will hear pawns referred to as "pawns" and the non-pawns referred to as "pieces." This can be confusing for new players, but you'll get the hang of it after a little while.
The game pieces have the following movement and capture capabilities:
Pawns can move two squares forward from their starting position, or a single square forward on any non-capture move. Pawns cannot move backwards. Pawns can capture diagonally (but not directly) forward a single square.
Knights always move two ranks and one file, or two files and one rank, from the square they are on. Another way to describe knight movement is one square straight in any direction, and then one square diagonally, but not backward. A helpful way to think about it is that the knight always moves in "L" shapes. Keep in mind that knights can "jump" or "hop over" other game pieces to get to their target square (for either capturing or regular movement). Knights are the only piece that can "jump" over others.
Bishops move diagonally any number of squares in a single direction each time they are moved. Each side (black and white) gets a bishop which starts on the light squares, and a bishop that starts on the dark squares. By virtue of how a chess board is setup, a bishop will go the entire game on the same color squares. You will often hear bishops referred to as a player's "light square bishop" or "dark square bishop" because of this unique color limitation.
Rooks can move any number of squares in a single direction on the same rank or same file. In simpler terms, rooks move in straight lines.
Queens move with the combined power of bishops (diagonally) and rooks (along files or ranks). However, on any given move, the queen must be moved with only one of the two methods.
Kings can move one square in any direction, including diagonally. Unlike all other pieces, kings are not allowed to move into a space where it is threatened with capture, and if the king finds itself in such a space after the opponent's move, the only legal moves are ones that end with the king in a "non-threatened" or "non-attacked" square. This rule of preserving the king extends to the king's friendly pawns and pieces: it is not legal to make a move that opens your king up to capture on the opponent's next turn.
Starting Positions
Take a look at the picture below here. It shows (from black's perspective) the starting position of a classical chess game. The two sides are mirror images of each other: the pieces all face each other, and the king and queen follow this rule. When you are playing white, the queen is to the left of the king, but for black, the queen is to the king's right. A helpful mnemonic for remembering how the kings and queens are setup: "Queen starts on her color."
Starting with an empty board, if you place the following pieces on the following square, you will have the game setup correctly:
White: Ra1, Nb1, Bc1, Qd1, Ke1, Bf1, Ng1, Rh1, and the pawns on a2, b2, c2, d2, e2, f2, g2, h2
Black: Ra8, Nb8, Bc8, Qd8, Ke8, Bf8, Ng8, Rh8, and the pawns on a7, b7, c7, d7, e7, f7, g7, h7
Capturing
When a pawn or piece moves into an opposing pawn or piece's square, the moving piece "captures" the other. Captured pieces are removed from the board by their capturing player and placed to the side in view of both players.
Check and Checkmate
When a pawn or piece is moved such that it threatens to capture the opposing king on the next turn, that is called putting the king in "check." The "checked" player must get out of check on their next turn. If there are no legal moves that the checked player can take to avoid the king's capture on the following turn, that is known as "checkmate" or simply "mate." A mate ends the game as a win for the player who made the last move.
There are three possible ways to escape check:
Stalemate
A stalemate occurs when the current player is not in check, but has no legal moves available to them. Stalemates result in a draw.
Starting the Game
White plays first. Turns alternate from there.
Stages of the Game
Chess games are usually described as having three stages: the "opening," the "middle game" or "mid-game," and the "endgame."
The opening begins with the very first move by white, and transitions to the mid-game slowly or quickly as moves which are focused on pawn and piece development give way to moves that are focused on attacking the opponent's position.
The middle game roughly begins when a player first attempts to establish a true advantage (generally by attacking the opponent's position), and ends when that advantage has been solidified.
The endgame begins when it is relatively clear that the players are now playing not to see which of them will win, but rather if the player with the advantage will be able to win, or if the game will end in a draw.
And while I have your attention, be sure to come back to this page and keep the terminology fresh in your mind. Apparently, studies have shown that verbal skill (in particular, the ability to think about and describe what the state of the board is in language terms) is one of the strongest correlates to chess-playing strength that scientists have found.
Without further ado, here are the concepts and terms for you to keep top-of-mind:
Algebraic game notation
Take a look at the picture below. You will see that there are numbers and letters inscribed on the side of the board. These letter-number combinations, when combined with the abbreviations for pieces, are used to represent which piece moves where when notating a chess game.
The abbreviations for the game pieces are as follows (notice the letters are capitalized):
N = knight
B = bishop
R = rook
Q = queen
K = king
When moving pawns (but not capturing), it is generally enough to simply note the destination square, since only one pawn of any color can move into any square at any time. You may want to reread that last sentence a couple times...
Here are some special characters you will need for complete notation. If you don't know what the long form terms mean, you can find them below.
'x' is used to communicate "captures"
'+' stands for "check"
'#' stands for "checkmate"
'e.p.' is used when a pawn captures en passant
'[pawn move]Q' is used to communicate a pawn promotion, in this case to a queen
'0-0' (those are two zeros) stands for the king-side (also called "short side") castle move
'0-0-0' (three zeros) stands for the queen-side (also called "long side") castle move
And last but not least:
1-0 means "white wins"
0-1 means "black wins"
1/2 - 1/2 means "draw" a.k.a the game was tied
Rank & File
Very simple: ranks are the rows (1 - 8) and files are the columns (a - h) of a chess board. You start with the file and then rank when writing or naming the square you want to reference. Looking at that picture above again, we can say that white's king is still on its starting square, e1.
Example Moves
Below are some example moves in notation, and then in English. The number that starts the line is the turn in the game, and the moves are always listed white move first, then black move second.
11. 0-0 Nb3
(Turn 11. White castles king-side. Black moves their knight to the b3 square.)
20. h8Q fxe3e.p.
(Turn 20. White moves a pawn to square h8 and promotes it to a queen. Black's pawn on the f file captures the pawn on e3 en passant.)
7. Ng7+ Rde1
(Turn 7. White moves knight to g7 and puts black king in check. Black moves the rook on the d file to e1. Notice there must be another black rook that can reach e1, so the moved rook's starting file had to be listed for disambiguation.)
17. 0-0-0 1-0
(Turn 17. White castles queen-side. Then white wins. Notice that there is no '#' checkmate symbol on the final white move, so it cannot be a checkmate win. Black must have resigned.)
Pieces
There are six kinds of game pieces in chess: pawns, knights, bishops, rooks, queens, and kings. Typically, you will hear pawns referred to as "pawns" and the non-pawns referred to as "pieces." This can be confusing for new players, but you'll get the hang of it after a little while.
The game pieces have the following movement and capture capabilities:
Pawns can move two squares forward from their starting position, or a single square forward on any non-capture move. Pawns cannot move backwards. Pawns can capture diagonally (but not directly) forward a single square.
- En passant: Pawns have a special way of capturing/being captured by other pawns: If a pawn taking its two-square move from its starting position ends up on a square in the same rank as an adjacent enemy pawn, the enemy pawn may capture the pawn that moved two squares by moving forward diagonally into the same file as the enemy pawn. This must be the move immediately after the two square pawn move to be legal. This is called capturing "en passant."
- Promotion: When a pawn advances all the way down the board to the opposite player's side (i.e. if a white pawn reaches the 8th rank, or a black pawn reaches the 1st rank), it is "promoted" to a piece of the mover's choice from: queen, rook, bishop, or knight. The pawn is removed and the chosen piece is put in its place. Pawn promotion can cause players to have more than their starting number of non-pawn pieces. Typically, this is in the form of extra queens.
Knights always move two ranks and one file, or two files and one rank, from the square they are on. Another way to describe knight movement is one square straight in any direction, and then one square diagonally, but not backward. A helpful way to think about it is that the knight always moves in "L" shapes. Keep in mind that knights can "jump" or "hop over" other game pieces to get to their target square (for either capturing or regular movement). Knights are the only piece that can "jump" over others.
Bishops move diagonally any number of squares in a single direction each time they are moved. Each side (black and white) gets a bishop which starts on the light squares, and a bishop that starts on the dark squares. By virtue of how a chess board is setup, a bishop will go the entire game on the same color squares. You will often hear bishops referred to as a player's "light square bishop" or "dark square bishop" because of this unique color limitation.
Rooks can move any number of squares in a single direction on the same rank or same file. In simpler terms, rooks move in straight lines.
Queens move with the combined power of bishops (diagonally) and rooks (along files or ranks). However, on any given move, the queen must be moved with only one of the two methods.
Kings can move one square in any direction, including diagonally. Unlike all other pieces, kings are not allowed to move into a space where it is threatened with capture, and if the king finds itself in such a space after the opponent's move, the only legal moves are ones that end with the king in a "non-threatened" or "non-attacked" square. This rule of preserving the king extends to the king's friendly pawns and pieces: it is not legal to make a move that opens your king up to capture on the opponent's next turn.
- Castling: Finally, the king and rooks are capable of the special moves of king-side and queen-side castle. The castling moves involve two pieces moving at the same time. For white, the king-side castle involves the moves Kf1 and Rhf1. For black, the king-side castle is Kf8 and Rhf8. Queen-side castling for white is Kc1 and Rad1, and for black queen-side castling is Kc8 and Rad8.
- There are limitations to how and when a player can make a castling move. So long as the following criteria are true, the castling move is legal.
- The king has not yet moved this game.
- The rook that is being moved with the king for this type of castle has not yet moved this game.
- There are no pieces in between the king and rook which are moving.
- The king is not in check.
- The king will not end up in check at the end of the move.
- The king is not moving "through" check on the f file (for king-side castle) or d file (for queen-side castle).
Starting Positions
Take a look at the picture below here. It shows (from black's perspective) the starting position of a classical chess game. The two sides are mirror images of each other: the pieces all face each other, and the king and queen follow this rule. When you are playing white, the queen is to the left of the king, but for black, the queen is to the king's right. A helpful mnemonic for remembering how the kings and queens are setup: "Queen starts on her color."
Starting with an empty board, if you place the following pieces on the following square, you will have the game setup correctly:
White: Ra1, Nb1, Bc1, Qd1, Ke1, Bf1, Ng1, Rh1, and the pawns on a2, b2, c2, d2, e2, f2, g2, h2
Black: Ra8, Nb8, Bc8, Qd8, Ke8, Bf8, Ng8, Rh8, and the pawns on a7, b7, c7, d7, e7, f7, g7, h7
Capturing
When a pawn or piece moves into an opposing pawn or piece's square, the moving piece "captures" the other. Captured pieces are removed from the board by their capturing player and placed to the side in view of both players.
Check and Checkmate
When a pawn or piece is moved such that it threatens to capture the opposing king on the next turn, that is called putting the king in "check." The "checked" player must get out of check on their next turn. If there are no legal moves that the checked player can take to avoid the king's capture on the following turn, that is known as "checkmate" or simply "mate." A mate ends the game as a win for the player who made the last move.
There are three possible ways to escape check:
- Move the king to a square where the opposing player cannot capture on their next turn. Depending on the board-state, there may be no such square.
- Capture the piece that is threatening to capture the king. Depending on the board-state, it may not be possible to capture all threats in a single move. Likewise, any move that would open up the king to a new threat is not a legal move.
- Interpose a pawn or piece between the threat and the king, such that the opponent's pawn or piece is no longer threatening to capture the king on the next turn. Worth noting: it is impossible to interpose between a king and a knight due to the knight's ability to "hop" over other pawns and pieces on the board.
Stalemate
A stalemate occurs when the current player is not in check, but has no legal moves available to them. Stalemates result in a draw.
Starting the Game
White plays first. Turns alternate from there.
Stages of the Game
Chess games are usually described as having three stages: the "opening," the "middle game" or "mid-game," and the "endgame."
The opening begins with the very first move by white, and transitions to the mid-game slowly or quickly as moves which are focused on pawn and piece development give way to moves that are focused on attacking the opponent's position.
The middle game roughly begins when a player first attempts to establish a true advantage (generally by attacking the opponent's position), and ends when that advantage has been solidified.
The endgame begins when it is relatively clear that the players are now playing not to see which of them will win, but rather if the player with the advantage will be able to win, or if the game will end in a draw.
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