Do you have to capture in chess?

No. Captures are never compulsory, unlike draughts, where taking is forced. You can look at a hanging queen and play something else entirely, and sometimes that is right: a check, a promotion or a mate threat can be worth more than material. At beginner level, though, if a piece is free and taking it does not leave something of yours hanging, take it.

Can you capture two pieces in one move?

No. One move takes one piece at most, and the capturing piece stops on the square it captured on. A rook that takes a knight on d5 does not carry on down the file to the bishop on d8. A fork attacks two men at once, but it still only collects the second one on the following move.

Can a pawn capture the piece in front of it?

No. A pawn captures one square diagonally forward and nothing else, so a white pawn on e4 takes on d5 or f5 but never on e5. Anything parked directly in front of a pawn is completely safe from that pawn, and it also stops the pawn from moving at all. En passant is the only capture a pawn makes any other way.

How do you capture in chess?

White plays 1.exd5 and the black pawn goes in the box. The white pawn leaves e4, lands on d5, and the piece that was standing there is off the board for the rest of the game. That is the whole mechanism. You capture by occupying the square, not by jumping the piece the way you do in draughts, and your man finishes the move standing exactly where the enemy man stood.

White to move. 1.exd5 takes the pawn on d5 and the white pawn ends the move there. The pawn on e5, directly in front, cannot be touched: pawns never capture straight ahead. And the rook on a1 cannot reach a7, because its own pawn on a3 blocks the file.

Five things that hold for every capture

You have to reach the square legally. The rook on a1 above would love the rook on a7, but the pawn on a3 is in the way, and the knight is the only piece allowed over other men.
One capture per move. A bishop that takes on d5 stops on d5, even with a loose queen sitting on e6 one square further along the diagonal.
You can never capture your own piece. If your knight and your bishop both want e5 and your own pawn is standing there, neither of them gets it.
The king captures like anything else, as long as the square it lands on is undefended. A king on f1 will happily take a rook on g2. If that rook is protected, the capture is not merely unwise, it is illegal.
Taking is optional. Draughts forces you to capture. Chess never does, and plenty of strong moves consist of ignoring the piece on offer.

The pawn is the odd one out

Every other piece captures the way it moves. The pawn does not. It goes straight forward one square (two from its starting rank) and it takes one square diagonally forward, which is why the pawn on e4 in the diagram attacks d5 and f5 and is powerless against the pawn right under its nose on e5. Two pawns facing each other like that are frozen until something else arrives. Whole opening structures are built on that fact, and the details are on how pawns capture.

The capture that lands on an empty square

Exactly one capture in the Laws breaks the land-on-the-piece rule. Say your pawn is on e5 and your opponent’s d-pawn tries to slip past it with the two-square jump d7-d5. You may answer exd6: your pawn goes to d6, and the black pawn on d5 comes off the board even though nothing ever stood on d6. It is legal only on the move straight after the jump, and never again. Read what en passant is, because half the arguments I have had to settle at junior events are about this one move.

Where the games are actually decided

Most beginner games end because of a capture nobody planned. A piece gets left where it can be taken for nothing, the opponent spots it, and the contest is over. So the first habit worth building is a dull one: every time your opponent moves, look at your pieces that nothing is defending, then look at theirs. Undefended pieces are called hanging, and hanging piece puzzles are the cheapest rating points on offer. If you are the one handing them over, how to stop blundering is the page to read next.

Written down, a capture takes an x: exd5, Nxe5, Qxf7. That letter is all the notation adds, and what x means covers the rest of the symbols you will meet.