Name: Tidalgo, Mae Althea C.

Yr. & Section: BEEd 2-B

What Is Chess?
Chess is a board game played between two players that simulates a war between two kingdoms. It is
one of the most popular games in the world. Millions of people play it both recreationally and
competitively.

Chess is a turn-based strategy game with no hidden information. For this reason, the element of luck
is virtually non-existent in the game.

Equipment

To play chess, players need at least a set of chess pieces and a chessboard. A chess clock is also
necessary if players decide to play a timed game, and players often use a score sheet to record their
moves.

A chess piece set has two different armies of pieces, each containing eight pawns, two knights, two
bishops, two rooks, a queen, and a king. Players can distinguish their armies based on their colors,
with light and dark pieces. Regardless of the actual color of the pieces, the light side is called White,
while the dark side is called Black—reminiscent of the ivory and ebony pieces used in the past.

The chessboard has 64 squares organized in an eight-by-eight grid. The board is checkered with dark
and light squares. The board is divided into ranks (rows) and files (columns).

Chess clocks are tools that can mark the remaining time each player has. They can also add extra time
for each player after they make a move (called increments).

Chess Pieces
There are six types of chess pieces. They are the pawn, the knight, the bishop, the rook, the queen,
and the king. Each of those pieces moves differently and has a distinct value.
Pawns are worth one point and are not considered a piece. Knights and bishops are worth three
points, although masters and computers think bishops are generally worth a little more than a knight.
Knights and bishops comprise the minor pieces.

Rooks are worth five points, while the queen is worth nine. The rook and queen are the major pieces.
The king is the most valuable piece in chess—"losing" the king implies losing the game.

Note that the value of pieces is only an abstract concept and doesn't determine the game's outcome.
A player can be up a lot of material but lose the game if their opponent checkmates them (discussed
below).

Initial Setup
It's essential to learn the initial setup of the board and pieces to start a chess game. The board must
have a light square as its bottom-right square.

As stated in the previous section, both players start with eight pawns, two knights, two bishops, two
rooks, a queen, and a king. The white pawns go on the second rank of the board, while the black
pawns go on the seventh.

The rooks, knights, and bishops start filling up the first rank for White and eighth for Black from the
outside in. The queen and king finish the setup, with the queen always going on the square that
matches its color (the white queen on a light square, the black queen on a dark square).

Piece Movement And Captures

Each of the pieces in chess has a distinctive movement:

Pawn

Pawns move up the board one square unless it's the first time they're moving when they may move
two squares. Note that they cannot move backward.

The pawn captures pieces one square diagonally and is the only chess piece that captures differently
than the way it moves.

Knight

The knight moves two squares horizontally and one vertically, or two squares vertically and one
horizontally. The way the knight moves resembles the upper-case "L."
Knights capture by landing on top of a piece and are the only pieces that can jump over others.

Bishop

The bishop can move any number of squares diagonally. Because of how it moves, the bishop can
never step on squares of another color than the one it started on. Players start the game with two
bishops, a light-squared and a dark-squared one.

Rook

The rook can move any number of squares vertically or horizontally. Rooks are also the only piece
that, together with the king, can castle.

Queen

The queen is the most powerful piece on the board. It can move diagonally, horizontally, or vertically
as many squares as it wants (unless another piece blocks it).

King

The king can move one square in every direction. As stated above, the king can make use of the
special castling rule together with a rook.

Check And Checkmate

When a player's king is under the attack of an enemy piece, the king is in check. The player whose king
is under attack needs to protect the king with one of their pieces, move the king out of the attacker's
range, or capture the piece attacking their king. If the attacked player can't do any of those, the king is
in checkmate (also shortened as "mate") and they lose the game.

Checkmating the opponent is the ultimate goal of chess. To learn more about different types of
checkmate, you can take this interactive lesson or read this article.

Special Rules
Chess has three special rules that apply only in specific situations. Below the three special chess rules
are explained:

Castling

Players can castle to protect their king and develop a rook simultaneously. When a player castles,
their king moves two squares to either side, and the rook from that side jumps over the king, landing
next to it.

A player can only castle if all of the conditions below are true:

The player has never moved the king or the rook.

Pawn Promotion

When pawns reach the rank farthest from the one where they've started, they can promote into any
minor or major piece. White's pawns promote when they reach the eighth rank, while Black promotes
on the first.
En Passant Capture

The en passant is the most discombobulating rule in chess for a beginner player. It's a special type of
rule that allows pawns to capture other pawns in the following conditions:

The capturing pawn is three ranks away from the rank where it started the game.
An enemy pawn on an adjacent file moves forward two squares in one move, landing right next to the
capturing pawn.

The en passant capture happens on the turn immediately after the one when the pawn being
captured lands next to the capturing pawn.
If all of the conditions are true, the attacking player can choose to make the en passant capture. The
attacking pawn moves one square diagonally, landing one square ahead of the captured pawn.

Game Outcomes
In chess, a player can either win, lose, or draw a game. A player can win by checkmating the opponent
or if the other player lets their time run out, or "flag." Conversely, a player loses if their opponent
checkmates their king or if they let their clock run out.

The game can end in a draw in several different ways. Those include draws by mutual agreement
between players, threefold repetition, dead position, 50-move rule, or stalemate.

Time Controls
Recreational, over-the-board (OTB) chess games can have no time limit, especially among beginners.
However, competitive chess always uses time restraints for each player to limit the game's duration.

Games receive different classifications according to the time control they have. Classical games have
longer time controls, with each player usually having more than one hour to play their moves. These
longer time controls are more common for OTB play.

Chess Notation

Chess notation is a way of recording or describing the moves of a chess game. Although there are
different techniques of achieving that, the official way to record them today is through algebraic
notation. This kind of notation shows you the move number, the piece being moved, and the square
where it lands.

In algebraic notation, every square of the board has a name. The name consists of a letter that
identifies the file, followed by a number that identifies the rank.

Each of the pieces is abbreviated by a capital letter: "K" for the king, "Q" for the queen, "R" for rook,
"B" for the bishop, and "N" for the knight. Pawns are not pieces and, therefore, don't have an
abbreviation.

Captures are represented by the letter x, while castling short is represented by 0-0 and castling long is
0-0-0. 1-0 illustrates that White won the game, 0-1 means Black won, and 1/2-1/2 indicates a draw.

:History

There is no definite evidence of when exactly chess first appeared. However, historians tend to agree
that chess evolved from earlier Indian board games, likely chaturanga. The ancient Indian game
shared two characteristics present in all later variants: a different power for each piece and the fact
that the fate of the king determines the outcome of the game.

Chaturanga later evolved into shatranj during the seventh century. Shatranj spread to the East, North,
and West, gaining different characteristics along the way. After reaching Europe, the game slowly
evolved into what we know today as standard chess.
From the 1800s forward, chess matches between two players to determine the world champion grew
in popularity. The first official champion came in 1886 when Wilhelm Steinitz defeated Johannes
Zukertort. FIDE started organizing the World Chess Championship in 1948, with GM Mikhail Botvinnik
winning the title.

From 1948 until 1993, FIDE continued organizing the World Chess Championship. The champions from
that period were, besides Botvinnik, GMs Vasily Smyslov, Mikhail Tal, Tigran Petrosian, Boris Spassky,
Bobby Fischer, Anatoly Karpov, and Garry Kasparov.

In 1993, reigning world champion Kasparov had disagreements with FIDE and created another
international chess organization, the Professional Chess Association (PCA), with GM Nigel Short. From
1993, there were two titles for world champion, one for PCA and another for FIDE. PCA champions
included Kasparov and GM Vladimir Kramnik. The title reunited in 2006, with Kramnik defeating FIDE
champion GM Veselin Topalov.