Chess rules for kidsstepsies.com/chess
Meet the board
- Set up the board: Light square on the right. Rooks, knights, bishops from the corners; the queen on her own color; white moves first.
- The chess pieces: King, queen, rook, bishop, knight, pawn: 16 pieces each.
How each piece moves
- The pawn: One square forward (two on its first move). Captures one square diagonally forward. Never backward.
- The rook: Any distance in a straight line: forward, backward, left or right.
- The bishop: Any distance on a diagonal. It stays on its own color.
- The queen: Any distance in a straight line or on a diagonal: a rook and a bishop together.
- The king: One square in any direction. He may never move into check.
- The knight: An L: two squares one way, one to the side. It jumps over pieces.
- What each piece is worth: Pawn 1, knight 3, bishop 3, rook 5, queen 9.
How a game ends
- Check and checkmate: Check: the king is attacked. Checkmate: he can't escape, and the game ends.
- Stalemate and draws: No legal move and not in check: stalemate, a draw.
Special moves
- Castling: The king moves two squares toward a rook; the rook jumps to his other side.
- Pawn promotion: A pawn on the last row becomes a queen, rook, bishop or knight.
- En passant: A pawn may capture an enemy pawn that just moved two squares beside it, as if it moved one.
More printables: Piece moves chart, Board setup sheet, Paper chess set, Mate-in-one puzzles.