The Chess Pieces

You always start the game with 16 chess pieces. Your opponent also starts with exactly the same number, so everything is pretty much equal at the start of the game.

So that you know who owns what, one player always controls the white pieces and the other player always controls the black pieces. Of course, they don't have to be exactly black and white, any other two colors would be just as good, but we always say black and white to make life easy.

Anyway, at the start of the game, all your pieces are on your side of the board, and your opponents pieces are all on the opposite side, near your opponent. The center of the board is empty to begin with, although that won't be for too long!

There are 6 different types of chess pieces, and each type of piece has a different name. You may already know some of the names, but here is the complete list anyway: pawn, bishop, knight, rook, queen and king. If you wish, you can read an interesting article on the history of chess, which describes a little bit about the origin of these names.

Each chess piece must be on a different square, and seeing that you have 16 pieces, that means that all your pieces will fill up two entire ranks at the start, and the same goes for your opponent's pieces.

At the start of the game, you have 8 pawns (these are your weakest pieces to begin with, but luckily you get a lot of them). You then get 2 knights, 2 bishops, 2 rooks, 1 queen and 1 king, which is your most valuable piece, because if you lose your king, then you lose the game!

Each type of piece has different rules on how it can move and capture and so on, so we will take a look at each individual piece in turn.

First, though, you will learn how to move and capture, which is what chess is all about, after all!