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This is an introductory game which helps introduce chess to children and people new to the game.
This game highlights potential valid move positions and offers play hints.
Choose to play as either red or blue, then choose your difficulty level. Click the PLAY button when you are ready to begin your game.
The welcome screen has chess rules linked to in the lower right corner and a sound control button in the upper left corner.
We also offer Chess Grandmaster, a similar game for experienced chess players.
Chess is one of the oldest games in the world. It was probably invented in India more than a thousand years ago.
Each player controls an army of pieces which are set up at the start of the game as shown. The aim of the game is to use your army to capture the enemy king.
This capture happens when the king is under attack and unable to avoid capture. In that case we have a checkmate and the game is over.
Pawns only move forward.
On the first move a pawn can move one or two spaces. On the next turn it can only move one space forward.
Pawns move diagonally to take opponents.
If a pawn reaches the opposite side of the board, it is promoted to a higher piece (except king).
There is no limit to how many pawns can be promoted.
Rooks are the second strongest pieces of our army and move in a continuous line forwards, backwards, and side-to-side.
Knights are the only pieces that jump off the board. Unlike other pieces the are not blocked if there are pieces between them and their destination square.
To make it easier to remember how a knight moves think of an L. Two spaces in a direction forward, backward, or side-to-side, and one space at a right turn.
Bishops move in continuous diagonal lines in any direction.
The queen is the strongest piece of all and moves in continuous diagonal and straight lines forward, backward, and side-to-side.
Each player starts with one queen but it is possible to obtain more by promoting pawns.
The king can move in any direction, one square at a time.
A king can't move to a square that is under attack by the opponent.
Castling is the only move that allows two pieces to move during the same turn. During castling a king moves two spaces towards the rook that it will castle with, and the rook jumps to the other side. The king can castle to either side as long as:
En passant is a special movement for pawns attacking pawns.
It only applies if your opponent moves a pawn two spaces, an its destination space is near your pawn. You can take the opposing piece by moving forward-diagonally to your pawn's attacked square.
A king is in check when an opponent is in a position that can attack the king. A player must move their king out of check, or block the check immediately.
A player cannot move their king into a check.
Putting an opponent's king in checkmate is the only way too win the game.
A king is in checkmate if it is in check, cannot block the check, and canot move to a square that is not under attack.
In the image above the red queen has the blue king in check, and all of the spaces where the king can move can be attacked by the queen. The king cannot take the queen, because the knight is protecting the queen. The blue bishop cannot block the queen. This is checkmate.
Simply put, a stalemate is a tie. It is achieved if there are no legal moves for a player to make.
On this board it is red's turn. All spaces around the king are being attacked, but the king is not in check, therefore it cannot move. The only other red piece, the pawn, is blocked by the king. Because movement is impossible, the game is a stalemate.
If red had another piece somewhere on the board that was not blocked, it would have to move. The game would continue.
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