How to play Chess

Place a light square at your right-hand corner. The back rank is rook, knight, bishop, queen, king, bishop, knight, rook, with the queen on her own colour. Put eight pawns on the next rank.

A legal chess move follows the piece's movement rule and leaves its own king safe. A capture replaces an opposing piece on the destination square. Except for knights, pieces cannot jump over other pieces; pawns have separate capture rules.

• Castling

  Castling moves the king two squares toward a rook and places that rook on the square the king crossed. The king and that rook must never have moved, and the squares between them must be empty. The king cannot castle while in check, through check or into check.

• En passant

  A pawn beside an opposing pawn that has just advanced two squares may capture it as if it had advanced only one. The capturing pawn moves diagonally to the passed-over square. This is allowed only on the immediately following move.

• Promotion

  A pawn reaching the last rank must become a queen, rook, bishop or knight of its own colour. The new piece takes effect immediately. Promotion is not limited to previously captured pieces and cannot create another king.

• Check and king safety

  A king is in check when attacked. The next move must remove every attack by moving the king, capturing the attacker or blocking the line where possible. A king is never captured, and two kings cannot stand on adjacent squares.

Checkmate wins immediately. If the player to move has no legal move but is not in check, the game is drawn by stalemate. Resignation ends a game; running out of time normally loses, but it is a draw if the opponent cannot possibly checkmate under the position's mating-material conditions.

Three occurrences of the same position or 50 moves per side without a pawn move or capture allow a draw claim; a legal intended move may complete the threshold. Five occurrences or 75 such moves per side draw automatically, with checkmate taking precedence. Repetition includes the same turn, castling and effective en-passant rights. ChessPlayX also recognises insufficient material and supported blocked-pawn dead positions; complex dead positions may still need an agreed draw.

Before capturing material, check whether your king is safe and whether the opponent has a forcing reply. Learn the difference between checkmate and stalemate before trading down to an ending.