How to play Chess

Chess is a battle between two armies of sixteen pieces on a board of 64 squares. Each piece moves in its own way, and the goal is not to capture everything but to trap the enemy king so that it cannot escape. Nothing is hidden and nothing is left to chance: there are no dice and no cards, so every win comes from seeing a little further and planning a little better than your opponent.

Here you play the white pieces against the computer, which takes black.

How to play on skill.games

When you open the game, the settings popup appears. Choose a difficulty (Easy, Normal, Hard or Crazy) and press PLAY. You always play white, so you make the first move.

• Moving: tap one of your pieces. Small dots mark the empty squares it can go to and rings mark the enemy pieces it can capture. Tap one of them to move. You can also drag the piece to its square and let go.
• Illegal moves are refused with a short shake and the message "That move isn't allowed", so you can never break the rules by accident.
• Promotion: when a pawn reaches the far side, a small picker opens. Choose a queen, rook, bishop or knight.
• Castling: move your king two squares towards a rook; the rook follows by itself.

Strips beside the board show the pieces each side has taken, and a king in check glows red.

The menu button in the top-left corner pauses the game. From there you can resume, start a new game or turn the sound on or off. Your game is saved after every move, so if you close the page in the middle of a game you can CONTINUE it next time.

When a game ends, the results screen shows the outcome and how it ended, the number of moves and the pieces each side took, plus your statistics for that level: wins, losses, draws, win rate, current streak and best streak.

Rules

Setup. The board is placed so that each player has a light square in the bottom-right corner. Each side has eight pawns on its second row and, behind them, rook, knight, bishop, queen, king, bishop, knight, rook. White moves first, then the players alternate.

How the pieces move:

• King: one square in any direction.
• Queen: any number of squares in a straight line along a row, column or diagonal.
• Rook: any number of squares along a row or column.
• Bishop: any number of squares along a diagonal, so it always stays on one colour.
• Knight: in an L shape, two squares one way and one square to the side.
• Pawn: one square straight forward, or two squares forward from its starting square. It captures one square diagonally forward. Pawns never move backwards.

Only the knight can jump; all other pieces stop at the first piece in their way. You capture an enemy piece by moving onto its square.

Special moves:

• Castling: once per game the king may move two squares towards one of its rooks, and that rook lands on the square the king crossed. It is only allowed if neither the king nor that rook has moved yet, the squares between them are empty, and the king is not in check, does not pass through an attacked square and does not land on one.
• En passant: if a pawn moves two squares and lands right beside one of your pawns, your pawn may capture it as if it had moved only one square. This must be done immediately, on the very next move.
• Promotion: a pawn that reaches the last row becomes a queen, rook, bishop or knight of your choice.

Check and checkmate. A king that is under attack is in check, and you must get out of check at once: move the king, block the attack or capture the attacker. You may never make a move that leaves your own king in check. If a player is in check and has no way out, that is checkmate and the game is over.

Draws. In this version, every draw ends the game automatically; there is no need to claim it:

• Stalemate: the player to move is not in check but has no legal move.
• Insufficient material: neither side can possibly checkmate, for example king against king, king and one bishop or knight against a lone king, or only bishops left that all stand on squares of the same colour.
• Threefold repetition: the same position appears for the third time with the same player to move.
• Fifty-move rule: fifty moves by each player in a row without a capture or a pawn move.

Strategy tips

• Fight for the centre. Pawns and pieces on the four middle squares control the most of the board. Opening with a centre pawn such as e4 or d4 is a reliable start.
• Develop before you attack. Bring your knights and bishops out early and avoid moving the same piece again and again in the opening. A queen that rushes out alone is easily chased around.
• Castle early. Castling tucks your king behind a wall of pawns and brings a rook towards the centre. A king left in the middle is an easy target.
• Check what your opponent threatens. Before every move, ask what the computer's last move attacks. Many games are lost to a piece that was simply left unprotected.
• Count your trades. Roughly, a pawn is worth 1, a knight or bishop 3, a rook 5 and a queen 9. Swap pieces when you are ahead in material, and avoid swaps when you are behind.
• Finish carefully. When you are far ahead, make sure the enemy king still has a legal move unless you are delivering checkmate. Stalemate turns a won game into a draw.

Difficulty levels

At every level the computer often starts with a known opening line for its first few moves, so its openings vary from game to game.

• Easy: plays deliberately weak moves. It neglects its pieces, ignores threats and can even walk into positions where you can checkmate it at once.
• Normal: values material and the centre and will happily take a piece you leave loose, but it does not check whether its own pieces are under attack and does not know how to finish a won game, so it often ends in stalemate rather than checkmate.
• Hard: also watches its threatened pieces, spots your checkmates in one move, likes to castle, and when it is winning it presses your king towards the edge to finish the game with checkmate.
• Crazy: weighs all of those ideas much more strongly, so it plays the sharpest and most determined chess of the four levels.