How to Play Chess

Chess is a two-player strategy game played on an 8x8 grid. Each player starts with 16 pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, and eight pawns. The objective is to checkmate your opponent's king.

Basic Rules

• King: Moves one square in any direction.
• Queen: Moves any number of squares in any direction.
• Rook: Moves any number of squares horizontally or vertically.
• Bishop: Moves any number of squares diagonally.
• Knight: Moves in an L-shape: two squares in one direction and then one square perpendicular.
• Pawn: Moves one square forward (two squares on its first move) and captures diagonally.

Special Moves

• Castling: A move involving the king and a rook that moves the king two squares towards the rook and the rook to the square over which the king crossed.
• En Passant: A special pawn capture that can occur immediately after a pawn moves two squares forward from its starting position and an enemy pawn could have captured it had it moved only one square forward.
• Promotion: When a pawn reaches the far end of the board, it can be promoted to any other piece (except a king), usually a queen.

Winning the Game

The game is won by checkmating the opponent's king. Checkmate occurs when the king is in a position to be captured (in check) and there is no legal move to escape the threat.

For more detailed rules and strategies, please refer to the following resources:

• Official Chess Rules
• Chess Strategies
• Chess Tutorials

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