a board game of strategic skill for two players, played on a checkered board. Each player begins the game with sixteen pieces that are moved and used to capture opposing pieces according to precise rules. The object is to put the opponent's king under a direct attack from which escape is impossible (checkmate).
In the opening and middlegame, the king will rarely play an active role in the development of an offensive or defensive position. Instead, a player will normally try to castle and seek safety on the edge of the board behind friendly pawns. In the endgame, however, the king emerges to play an active role as an offensive piece as well as assisting in the promotion of their remaining pawns.
It is not meaningful to assign a value to the king relative to the other pieces, as it cannot be captured or exchanged. In this sense, its value could be considered infinite. As an assessment of the king's capability as an offensive piece in the endgame, it is often considered to be slightly stronger than a bishop or knight.
A king can move one square in any direction (horizontally, vertically, diagonally) unless the square is already occupied by a friendly piece or the move would place the king in check.
Ordinarily the queen is slightly more powerful than a rook and a bishop together, while slightly less powerful than two rooks. It is almost always disadvantageous to exchange the queen for a single piece other than the enemy's queen.
The reason the queen is more powerful than a combination of a rook and bishop, even though they control the same number of squares, is twofold. First, the queen is a more mobile unit than the rook and bishop, as the entire power of the queen can be transferred to another location in one move, while transferring the entire firepower of a rook and bishop requires two moves. Second, the queen is not hampered by the bishop's inability to control squares of the opposite color to the square on which it stands. A factor in favor of the rook and bishop is that they can attack (or defend) a square twice, while a queen can only do so only once, but experience has shown that this factor is usually less significant than the points favoring the queen.
The queen is able to move any number of squares vertically, horizontally or diagonally.
In general, rooks are stronger than bishops or knights (which are called minor pieces) and are considered greater in value than either of those pieces by nearly two pawns but less valuable than two minor pieces. Two rooks are generally considered to be worth slightly more than a queen. Winning a rook for a bishop or knight is referred to as winning the exchange. Rooks and queens are called heavy pieces or major pieces, as opposed to bishops and knights, the minor pieces.
The rook also participates, with the king, in a special move called castling.
The rook moves horizontally or vertically, through any number of unoccupied squares.
Less experienced players tend to underrate the bishop. More experienced players understand the power of the bishop.
Bishops usually gain in relative strength towards the endgame as more pieces are captured and more open lines become available on which they can operate. A bishop can easily influence both wings simultaneously. In an open endgame, a pair of bishops is decidedly superior. A player possessing a pair of bishops has a strategic weapon in the form of a long-term threat to trade down to an advantageous endgame.
Two bishops vs King can force checkmate. The bishop is capable of skewering or pinning a piece. A bishop can in some situations hinder a knight from moving. In these situations, the bishop is said to be "dominating" the knight.
The bishop has no restrictions in distance for each move, but is limited to diagonal movement. Bishops cannot jump over other pieces.
A knight should always be close to where the action is, meaning it is best used on areas of the board where the opponent's pieces are clustered or close together. Pieces are generally more powerful if placed near the center of the board, but this is particularly true for a knight. A knight on the edge of the board attacks only three or four squares (depending on its exact location) and a knight in the corner only two. Moreover, it takes more moves for an uncentralized knight to switch operation to the opposite side of the board.
The knight move is unusual among chess pieces. When it moves, it can move to a square that is two squares horizontally and one square vertically, or two squares vertically and one square horizontally. The complete move therefore looks like the letter L. A knight can "jump over" all other pieces of any color.
is the most numerous piece in the game of chess, and in most circumstances, also the weakest.
A pawn that advances all the way to the opposite side of the board (the opposing player's first rank) is promoted to another piece of that player's choice: a queen, rook, bishop, or knight of the same color. The pawn is immediately (before the opposing player's next move) replaced by the new piece.
Unlike the other pieces, pawns may not move backwards. Normally a pawn moves by advancing a single square, but the first time a pawn is moved, it has the option of advancing two squares. Pawns may not use the initial two-square advance to jump over an occupied square, or to capture. Any piece directly in front of a pawn, friend or foe, blocks its advance.
In medieval chess, an attempt was made to make the pieces more interesting, each file's pawn being given the name of a commoner's occupation. On the board, from left to right, those titles were: gambler and other "lowlifes", also messengers (in the left-most file, that direction being literally sinister); city guard or policeman (in front of a knight, as they trained city guards in real life); innkeeper (bishop); merchant/moneychanger (always before the king, whether or not he is to the left or right of the queen, which depends on the color of the pieces); doctor (always the queen's pawn); weaver/clerk (in front of the bishop, for whom they wove or clericked); blacksmith (in front of a knight, as they care for the horses); worker/farmer (in front of a castle, for which they worked).
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