How to Play Chess: Rules, Setup and Your First Game
Chess has a reputation for being difficult to learn, and it is not deserved. The movement rules take about ten minutes to absorb, and once they are in place you can start a game immediately. What takes longer — a lifetime, for some people — is playing well. This guide covers the first part properly: the board, the pieces, the three special rules that trip up newcomers, and how a game actually ends. By the time you reach the bottom of the page you will know enough to sit down and play a full game without needing anyone to referee it. If you would rather learn by doing, keep a board open in another tab and play chess through the examples as you read them.
Setting up the board
A chessboard is eight squares by eight, sixty-four in total, alternating light and dark. Before anything else, turn it so that each player has a light square in the bottom-right corner. Get this wrong and every diagonal in the game comes out mirrored — bishops end up on the wrong colours and castling looks strange. Players in Britain sometimes remember it as "white on the right".
Each side occupies the two rows nearest to it. The back row, from left to right, runs rook, knight, bishop, queen, king, bishop, knight, rook. The eight pawns fill the row in front. The one detail worth memorising is that the queen starts on a square of her own colour — the white queen on a light square, the black queen on a dark one. Kings and queens are the pieces people swap by accident, and the queen-on-her-colour check catches it in a second.
White always moves first. There is no dice roll, no draw for the first move within a single game; in a match, players alternate colours between games.
The six pieces and how they move
Every piece has exactly one movement pattern, and only one of them can jump.
| Piece | How it moves | Rough value |
|---|---|---|
| Pawn | One square forward, or two on its very first move. Captures diagonally forward, one square — the only piece that captures differently from how it moves. | 1 |
| Knight | An L-shape: two squares in one direction, then one square across. The only piece that jumps over others. | 3 |
| Bishop | Any distance along a diagonal. Each bishop stays on its starting colour for the entire game. | 3 |
| Rook | Any distance along a rank or a file. | 5 |
| Queen | Any distance in any of the eight directions — rook and bishop combined. | 9 |
| King | One square in any direction, and never onto a square that is under attack. | — |
Those point values are a guide for trading pieces, not a rule of the game. Nobody hands you nine points for capturing a queen. They exist because most positions are decided by material, so knowing that a rook is worth more than a bishop stops you making obviously bad swaps. They break down in sharp positions, where a knight sitting on a strong central square can matter more than a rook that has nowhere to go.
A piece captures by moving onto an occupied square and removing what was there. You can never capture your own pieces, and you can never move through a piece — except with the knight, which ignores everything in between.
The three special rules
These are the ones that cause arguments, so they are worth learning properly rather than picking up by osmosis.
Castling moves the king two squares towards a rook, and the rook hops over to the square the king crossed. It is the only move where two pieces move at once, and it exists to get the king out of the centre and the rook into the game. Four conditions block it: the king has already moved; that particular rook has already moved; a piece stands between them; or the king would start from, pass through, or land on a square that an enemy piece attacks. Note the asymmetry — the rook is allowed to pass through an attacked square, the king is not.
En passant is the rule most casual games leave out, usually because nobody has heard of it. If a pawn advances two squares and lands directly beside an enemy pawn, that enemy pawn may capture it as though it had only moved one square, landing on the square it skipped. The catch is timing: the capture is legal only on the immediately following move. Wait a turn and the right is gone permanently.
Promotion happens when a pawn reaches the far end of the board. It is replaced immediately by a queen, rook, bishop or knight of the same colour — your choice, and you are not limited to pieces already captured. Nine queens on the board at once is legal, if improbable. Almost everybody promotes to a queen; the exception, called under-promotion, is usually a knight, because a knight reaches squares a queen cannot and occasionally delivers an immediate check that a queen would miss.
Check, checkmate and the ways a game can end
When a piece attacks the enemy king, the king is in check. You must respond immediately, and there are only three ways to do it: move the king to safety, capture the attacking piece, or block the line between them. Blocking does not work against a knight or against an adjacent attacker, which is why knight checks are so awkward.
Checkmate is check with no legal answer at all, and it ends the game on the spot. The king is never actually captured — the game simply stops. This is the goal, and everything else in chess is a means to it.
Stalemate is the trap that catches every beginner at least once. If the player to move has no legal move available but is not in check, the game is an immediate draw. Nothing is more deflating than being a queen and two rooks ahead, herding a lone king into a corner, and drawing because you left it nowhere to go. When you are winning comfortably, always check that the opponent has a legal move before you play yours.
Games are also drawn by agreement, by threefold repetition of the same position, by the fifty-move rule — fifty moves by each side with no capture and no pawn move — and by insufficient material, which means neither side owns enough pieces to force mate. A king and a lone bishop cannot checkmate a bare king no matter how long the game runs.
Reading and writing moves
Algebraic notation looks cryptic and takes about five minutes to learn. Files, running left to right from White's view, are lettered a to h; ranks are numbered 1 to 8 starting from White's side. Every square therefore has a name: e4, g7, a1. A move is written as the piece's letter plus the destination — N for knight, B for bishop, R for rook, Q for queen, K for king, and nothing at all for a pawn. So Nf3 means a knight to f3, and e4 means a pawn to e4. An "x" marks a capture, "+" a check, "#" checkmate, "0-0" castling on the king's side and "0-0-0" on the queen's side.
You do not need notation to play, but it is what every chess book, puzzle and video uses, so learning it early opens the entire literature. It also lets you save a game: copy the move list before you close the tab and you can replay it later on any analysis board.
Your first game, in practical terms
Knowing the rules and knowing what to do on move one are different problems. Three principles will carry you through the opening of almost any game.
- Take the centre. Push one of the two central pawns two squares. Pieces in the centre control more squares than pieces on the edge — a knight in the middle of the board reaches eight squares, a knight in the corner reaches two.
- Develop knights and bishops before anything else. Get them off the back row and onto squares where they do something. Avoid moving the same piece repeatedly in the opening while your others sit at home.
- Castle early. Usually within the first ten moves. A king left in the centre while the position opens is the single most common cause of a short, unpleasant defeat.
Resist the urge to bring the queen out early to hunt for a quick mate. Against anyone who knows the basics, an early queen sortie just gives them free moves as they develop pieces while attacking her.
Once you are moving, the most valuable habit you can build is a two-second check before every move: what is my opponent threatening? Beginners lose games not to deep strategy but to pieces left hanging on undefended squares. Look at every piece your opponent just moved and ask what it now attacks.
Where to actually play
Reading about the rules only goes so far — the movement patterns settle in your head after two or three real games and not before. The easiest starting point is a browser board that enforces the rules for you, because a board that refuses illegal moves is doing the job of a patient opponent. You can play chess in a browser tab with no account and no download, which removes the usual friction of signing up somewhere before you have decided whether you enjoy the game.
From there, the natural next steps are practising against a bot at a low setting, which our guide to playing chess against the computer covers in detail, and finding a human opponent — see how to play chess online with friends for link games and pass-and-play. If you would rather follow a structured route than wander, the four-week plan for beginners sets out what to learn in what order, and the overview of free online chess boards compares the no-registration options.
The short version: light square bottom-right, queen on her own colour, White first. Six movement patterns, three special rules, and a game that ends in checkmate, stalemate or a draw. Everything else is practice. More guides sit in the guides section on Bet365.
Common questions
Can a pawn move backwards?
No. Pawns are the only pieces that cannot retreat, which is why every pawn move is a permanent commitment. A pawn structure you weaken cannot be repaired later.
What happens if I touch a piece by accident?
In tournament play the touch-move rule applies: touch a piece and you must move it if it has a legal move. In casual games most people ignore it, but agree which way you are playing before the first move rather than during an argument.
Is the king ever captured?
No. The game ends at checkmate, one move before a capture would happen. You are also not allowed to make any move that leaves your own king in check.
How long does a game take?
Anything from three minutes to several hours, depending on the time control. Casual online games are commonly ten minutes each; blitz is three to five; classical tournament games can run past four hours.
Do I have to say "check" out loud?
It is polite in casual play and standard practice in clubs, but it is not required by the Laws of Chess. Your opponent is expected to notice.