Chess rules

Chess Rules & Glossary

Published 30 June 2026 · Updated 16 July 2026

Learn the core rules for playing chess, one clear page at a time: board setup, piece movement, castling, en passant, promotion, checkmate and the main draw procedures. These pages explain practical play in plain English; for organised competition, the current FIDE Laws and the event regulations govern arbiter procedure and exceptional cases.

Where to start

Brand new to the game? Start with the how to play chess guide for setup, movement, check, special moves and basic endings. For focused references, begin with setting up the board, how the pieces move, and check and checkmate, then add castling, en passant, promotion and draw rules before a formal game. The pages below include boards or diagrams where they help.

Look anything up: the A–Z glossary

Met a word you don’t know — fianchetto, luft, zugzwang? The A–Z chess glossary defines a broad set of common terms in a few plain-English sentences, with diagrams and deeper links where available.

Setup & basics

• Set up the board
  Which way the board goes and where every piece stands.
• Who moves first
  White always starts — and why that first move matters.
• Where the queen goes
  The one-second rule: queen on her own colour.
• The board & squares
  Files, ranks, diagonals and how squares are named.
• The goal of chess
  How a game is won, lost or drawn.
• How to win (basics)
  A practical beginner game plan built around legal threats and fewer loose pieces.

How the pieces move

• How the pieces move
  A one-page overview, plus a page for each piece.
• The knight
  The L-shaped jumper and the only piece that clears obstacles.
• The bishop
  The one-colour diagonal slider.
• The rook
  Straight-line power — and the castling partner.
• The queen
  Rook plus bishop — the most powerful piece.
• The king
  Slow but priceless — the piece you must protect.
• Pawns
  Forward to move, diagonally to capture — plus two twists.

Special moves

• En passant
  The immediate capture after an opposing pawn advances two squares.
• Castling
  Move the king and rook together — and know when it is illegal.
• Pawn promotion
  A pawn reaching the last rank must become a queen, rook, bishop, or knight.
• Touch-move rule
  Touch a piece, move that piece — the competition rule.

How games end

• Check & checkmate
  The king under attack — and when it ends the game.
• Stalemate
  No legal move, no check — an instant draw.
• Draws
  Agreement, stalemate, dead positions, claims and automatic draws.
• Threefold repetition
  “Positions, not moves in a row” — the repetition draw.
• Fifty-move rule
  When 50 moves without a pawn move or capture permit a draw claim.
• Insufficient material
  When no legal sequence can produce checkmate.

Notation & values

• Chess notation
  Read and write moves: Nf3, exd5, O-O, +, #.
• Piece values
  Pawn 1, knight/bishop 3, rook 5, queen 9 — and caveats.

Beyond the rules

Once you know the rules, the fun starts. Sharpen your eye with tactics puzzles, build an opening you understand, study the essential endgames, or just play a game against Stockfish — free, with no account, entirely in your browser.

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