Learn chess: the rules, the moves and the first checkmates

Everything you need before your first game, and nothing you don't. How the board goes down (the light square sits in the right-hand corner, and the queen starts on her own colour), what the pieces are called, who moves first, what you are actually trying to do, and how a game can end. I teach this to complete beginners in about an hour, and the order below is the order I use. Read the first three pages and you can set up a board and start. Read the rest and you will stop being surprised by the rules that catch most new players: that you cannot pass, that you cannot capture a king, that the queen is worth nine pawns but the king is worth the game.

Six pieces, six ways of moving, and more exceptions than most beginners expect. The rook goes in straight lines, the bishop on diagonals, the queen does both, the king does both but only one square, the knight jumps in an L and is the only piece allowed over other pieces, and the pawn moves forward but captures sideways. That is the whole list. The trouble is the small print: can a pawn go backwards (no), can the king move two squares (only when castling), can a king take a king (never, and the page on that one is the most searched question on this site). Each page below answers one of those questions on a real board, with the squares named so you can set it up yourself.

Three moves break the ordinary rules, and all three decide games. Castling moves two pieces at once and tucks your king away; it has five conditions and beginners forget at least two of them. En passant lets a pawn capture a pawn that tried to sneak past it, and it is legal for exactly one move. Promotion turns a pawn that reaches the far rank into a queen, or into a knight when a queen would be stalemate. I have watched adults lose a rook to en passant and then argue it was not a real rule. It is. Every page here gives the rule, the conditions, the one exception people miss, and a board you can check it on.

Check is a threat to the king. Checkmate is a threat you cannot meet, and it ends the game. Stalemate is having no legal move while not in check, and it ends the game too, as a draw, which is why it ruins so many won positions. Those three sentences are the heart of chess, and the pages below go one question at a time through what follows from them: the three ways out of check, why the king is never actually captured, whether a pinned piece can still give check (it can), whether two kings can ever stand next to each other (they cannot), and how to tell check from mate from stalemate at a glance.

About half of top-level games are drawn, and a surprising number of beginner games too, usually by accident. There are more ways to draw than people think: stalemate, the same position three times, fifty moves without a capture or pawn move, not enough material to mate, a dead position, perpetual check, or simply shaking hands. Each has a precise rule, and two of them (the seventy-five-move rule and fivefold repetition) happen automatically whether anyone claims them or not. The pages here explain each one, how you claim it at the board, and the one every beginner should learn first: how not to stalemate an opponent you have already beaten.

Chess notation looks like code and takes about twenty minutes to learn. Every square has a name (file letter, rank number: e4, f7), every piece has a letter except the pawn, and a move is just the piece plus where it went. The extras are few: x for a capture, + for check, # for checkmate, O-O for castling, =Q for promotion. Once you can read it you can read any book, follow any game and write your own on a scoresheet, which tournaments require. The pages below cover each symbol on its own, the two cases that confuse people (two knights that can reach the same square, and pawn captures), and the two file formats, PGN and FEN, you will meet the moment you use a chess app.

Over-the-board chess has rules that do not exist online. Touch a piece and you must move it. Press the clock with the hand that moved. Write every move down. Offer a draw only after you have moved and before you press the clock. Run out of time and you lose, unless your opponent cannot possibly mate you. None of this is hard, but the first tournament is where people learn it the expensive way. I did. These pages cover the clock, time controls and increments, the touch-move rule and j'adoube, illegal moves and what an arbiter does about them, Swiss pairings, ratings and titles, and the small etiquette that stops you annoying a room full of strangers.

Winning material is pointless if you cannot finish. These are the checkmates every player has to know cold: king and queen against king (ten moves at most, and the one beginners stalemate), king and rook against king, two rooks rolling the king up the board, two bishops, and the bishop and knight mate that even strong players practise. Then the short ones that decide beginner games: Scholar's mate and how to refuse it, Fool's mate, the back-rank mate, smothered mate. Each page gives the method as a sequence you can play through, with the squares named and a board to check, and the tests behind this site replay every mating line to make sure it is really mate.

You do not need an opening repertoire to reach 1500. You need four principles (a centre pawn, knights before bishops, castle early, do not move the same piece twice) and two or three openings you actually understand. That is what this section is: the principles, the first move question, and a handful of openings chosen because they teach good habits rather than because a grandmaster plays them. The Italian Game and the London System for White, the Sicilian and a solid reply to 1.d4 for Black, the Queen's Gambit because everybody asks about it, and the Scholar's mate defence because every beginner needs it in the first week.

Chess has a vocabulary, and commentators use it as if everyone was born knowing it. Gambit, tempo, fianchetto, luft, en prise, the exchange, a passed pawn, a bad bishop, a fortress. Each page here takes one term, defines it in a sentence, and then shows it on a board, because 'an outpost is a square a pawn cannot attack' means nothing until you see the knight on d5 that Black can never remove. The tactical words (fork, pin, skewer, discovered attack, zugzwang and the named mates) each have a full page in the patterns section, linked at the bottom.