Chess Basics: Understanding of the chess pieces

Chess is one of the ancient games played since 600 bc. The fascination for the game still exists because basically it is designed to be a strategic game between two highly skilled minds, or a fight between Intuiton and Logic. Chess is considered to be a game to increase your mental prowess and concentration skills. In order to reap the benefits of playing chess, one should understand the pieces and how they are employed in the game. This article tries to throw more light on those aspects.

In be beginning each player chooses one of the colors to play with (either black or white)and each of these players control sixteen chess pieces to start the game. Out of these sixteen pieces, eight pieces are what we call pawns. Then we have two knights, two rooks, two bishops, one queen and finally one king. The object of the game is to checkmate the opponent's king (this means that the opponent's king will get killed the next turn and has no where to move to).

The king can move only one square horizontally, vertically, or diagonally but as you become more familiar with the game, you will learn of more advanced techniques such as castling.

The queen can move any number of vacant squares diagonally, horizontally, or vertically and the queen is the most powerful piece on the board, however one can always argue that the most powerful piece depends on how you use that piece to your advantage.

The bishop moves any number of vacant squares in any direction diagonally. Note that a bishop never changes square color so a bishop on the "dark" square will always stay on the "dark" square and vice versa with the light square bishop.

The knight can jump over occupied squares and moves two spaces horizontally and one space vertically or vice versa, making an "L" shape.

The rook moves any number of vacant squares vertically or horizontally and provides extensive support in a bid to corner or check the opponents king. Rooks are also involved in the special technique known as castling.

Understanding pawns is a challenge even though they seem to be the simplest of all the pieces. If a pawn has not moved from the start of the game, it can move up one square as long as that square is unoccupied, However, pawns also has the option of moving two squares forward from the start position as long as the squares are not occupied by another piece. Pawns are the only pieces that capture differently than they move. They can capture an enemy piece on either of the two squares diagonally in front of them, but cannot move to these spaces if they are vacant. Once a pawn reaches the opposite side of the board into opponent's side of the board (eighth rank), the pawn can be promoted to a queen, rook, bishop, or knight of the same color. It is most common for players to promote their pawns to queens. When moving pawns, one must remember and never forget that pawns cannot move backwards, so be careful as to how you move your pawns. Do not underestimate pawns as they can serve as your best first line of defense against opponent's aggression and see each pawn as a potential queen so you do not "waste" pawns that quickly.

One's own friendly pieces cannot be passed if they are in the line of movement of another piece, and a friendly piece can never replace another friendly piece. Enemy pieces cannot be passed but they can be "killed." When a piece is captured (or killed), the attacking piece replaces the enemy piece on its square. The captured piece is thus removed from the game and may not be returned to play for the remainder of the game. The king cannot be captured, only put in check. If a player is unable to get the king out of check, checkmate results, with the loss of the game. The game may also end in drawn depending on various conditions that you will learn as you gain more experience with the game.