How many moves is the opening in chess?

Ten to fifteen in most games. The opening is finished when your pieces are off the back rank, your king is castled and your rooks can see each other, which usually happens around move twelve. Theory in a sharp variation can run past move twenty, but that part is memorised rather than worked out, and nobody needs it below club level.

When does the endgame start?

There is no rule, only a useful test: when you can walk your king towards the centre without being mated for it, you are in an endgame. Queens coming off is the other common marker. Some games skip the middlegame almost entirely and drop into a rook ending after one exchange on move fifteen.

Which phase should a beginner study first?

The basic checkmates, because they decide games you have already won. King and queen against king, then king and rook against king. After that, tactics, which is what the middlegame is made of. Openings come last: four principles will take you a long way, and twenty memorised moves of a line you do not understand will not.

What are the three phases of a chess game?

The pieces tell you which phase you are in. Everybody at home on the back rank: opening. A full board with the pieces developed and the kings tucked away: middlegame. Two rooks, four pawns and a pair of kings that suddenly want to walk forward: endgame. There is no rule in the Laws that marks the borders, and no arbiter announces them. They are a way of talking about what the position is asking you to do.

The opening: get everybody out

Ten to fifteen moves, and the job is simple. Claim a share of the centre, get the knights and bishops off the back rank, castle, connect the rooks.

Play 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Nc3 Nf6 5.O-O from the start and look at what has happened: three white pieces off the back rank, the king safe on g1, the rook on f1, and not one piece attacked yet. That is an opening done properly.

What you are not doing in those moves is attacking. Beginners lose games by hunting for a quick mate with the queen on move three while the opponent brings out three pieces. Development first, threats later. The four rules that cover almost all of it are on the opening principles, and the opening puzzles are mostly players who ignored them.

The middlegame: the plans start when the pieces stop

Now the board is full, both kings are away from the centre, and nothing forces itself on you. This is the hardest phase to teach, because there is no checklist, and it is where games at every level are actually won.

Two things happen here. You form a plan, which usually means picking a target: a weak pawn on d6, an open file for a rook, a hole on d5 where a knight can sit forever. And you calculate tactics, because with sixteen pieces still on the board somebody’s piece is loose every few moves. Below 1800, tactics dominate: the player who sees the fork on c7 wins, plan or no plan.

The endgame: your king joins in

Then the queens come off, then the minor pieces, and the position changes character completely. The king, which has spent thirty moves hiding behind three pawns because a single check could be fatal, becomes one of the strongest pieces on the board and walks straight up the middle.

A whole game reduced to this. Kings on d4 and d6 and one pawn on e4, and the result depends entirely on which king gets in front of the pawn first. On move ten the king on d4 would be mated; here it is the main attacker.

Pawns matter more than they did, because every one of them is a queen waiting for an escort. A single passed pawn beats an extra bishop in plenty of positions. And precision goes up: in the middlegame a second-best move costs you a little, in a pawn ending it costs you the point, since one careless king step hands over the opposition and the game.

This is also the phase most beginners never study, which is why how to checkmate with king and queen or king and rook is worth an evening of your life.

Where one phase ends and the next begins

The borders are blurry on purpose. A queen exchange on move 14 can drop you straight from opening to endgame with the rooks and knights still on. A locked pawn chain can keep you in a middlegame past move 50.

The practical test is your own king. If bringing it to the centre would get it mated, you are in a middlegame. If bringing it to the centre is the best move on the board, you are in an endgame. Puzzles are sorted the same way, so if you want to work on one phase at a time, start with the middlegame puzzles and move to the endgame ones when the middlegame stops surprising you.