Ever wondered “How does each chess piece move?” In order to play chess online or face to face over a chessboard you need to learn how chess pieces move. Each chess piece has its own rules and you should understand them all if you want to win at chess.

This tutorial explains the basics of all chess piece moves and includes a print-friendly diagram (pdf) to download and use during your games. It is suitable for beginners wanting to learn to play chess.

Chess Pieces and How They Move

Pawns

Pawns can only move forward up the board. They normally move one square at a time. The exception is that on their first move they can move two squares, but only on their first move!

A pawn is weak on its own, but it has a unique strength. When a pawn reaches the other side of the chessboard (called the back rank) the rules allow it to be promoted to any other piece (queen, rook, bishop or knight but not king!). Usually, pawns are promoted to queens, but not always – the player moving the pawn chooses.

King

The king can move one square in any direction, providing the square he is moving to is not under threat from an enemy piece – doing so is called “moving into check”. Moving into check is illegal as the opponent could then take the king on their next turn and the game would be over.

Despite his limited mobility, the king is the most important piece on the board – guard him well. When a player cannot move his king away from threat of capture by the opponent this ends the game and is called checkmate. Capture of the opposing king is a primary objective of the game!

A king can also move two squares by the player performing a special move called castling. This rule will be fully explained in a later article.

Queen

The queen can move any number of squares in any direction, providing she moves in a straight line.

Remember though, she cannot move like a knight!

This extreme mobility makes the queen the most powerful piece on a chess board.

Bishop

The bishops can move any number of squares diagonally, but they must always remain on the same colour squares from which they started the game. Each player has one black and one white squared bishop.

Bishops can be very powerful when placed on the long diagonals (corner to corner) or in open positions where there are few pieces remaining occupying squares of their colour.

Knight

Knights have an unusual move that resembles a letter “L”. Knights move twos squares up or down, left or right and then one square at a 90-degree angle to this. This means that if a knight starts on a white square then its next move will land it one a black square and so on.

The knight is the only piece which can “jump over” other pieces and as such can be very useful in cramped board positions.

Rook or Castle

The rook moves in a straight line up or down, left or right, any number of squares. Rooks can only be used in castling if they have not moved previously.

Rooks can be very powerful on open ranks or files, especially in the end game if two rooks can be linked together (doubled).

Additional Information

These are the rules covering the basic moves of chess pieces. There are other moves such as king and queen side castling and en passant which will be dealt with in later, more advanced article (with even more diagrams!).

Chess Etiquette

Chess etiquette for over the board games means that a piece should only be touched once when moving chess pieces. For casual play this is less important, but it is a good practice to aquire the habit of touching and moving pieces once only if you plan to take part in competitive play. Of course this is unimportant in computer chess, but it is good to be aware of.

Chess Piece Moves Diagram Download

How to move chess pieces diagram – a free PDF download for all chess pieces and moves.

Now you know how to move chess pieces how about trying your new knowledge against our computer online chess game? It’s free!

Computer Chess Online - Beginners Guide to Chess Piece Moves

Free Online Chess for Kids

Use the online flash chess game here on this website. (Shameless plug!)

Flashchess3 gives a great game of chess for kids and plays on a nice 3d board.  Left click with the mouse selects a piece to move (when it is your turn). The legal moves for a given piece are all highlighted so teaching the moves is straightforward and the computer is not too strong as to make it impossible to win.  There are three difficulty levels to further match the ability of the player to the level of the game.

Click here for an easy chess game for kids.

Download the Crafty Chess GUI

This is an offline option and little bit more complicated.  Some knowledge of software is required as the program will have to be downloaded and installed on your PC, but the results are worth it. The advantage here is that once the initial setup is completed your child will never outgrow the program.  Not bad for a fee download.

How can I be so confident?  Well, chess software beat the world’s best chess player at the time (Gary Kasparov) some years ago.  Since that time chess programs have only got better.

The Crafty chess engine plays chess to a very high standard (Grandmaster) on maximum settings, but using this free interface it can be limited to a more reasonable level. After all, we did promise you “Easy Chess Games for Kids”, right?

First, download and install the Crafty GUI itself.

The interface can be downloaded from: http://valters-and.co.cc/crafty/gui.php

The Crafty book files are available from: http://valters-and.co.cc/crafty/files/crafty_23.2_book.zip

Unzip the GUI file into a folder of your choice and then download the Crafty book files and copy them into exactly the same folder as the folder Crafty was unzipped into.  (Copy the book files over only, not the files still in the unzip folder.)

When you double click the Crafty.exe in the folder you chose the program will automatically find the book files if they have been placed in correct folder. At this point it might be worth making a desktop shortcut icon too.

If you run into any difficulties along the way please follow the instructions given on the main Crafty website which is at: Crafty Chess

All downloads are free.

Commercial Options

Free software is often excellent, but sometimes you want life to be simple.  Commercial chess software installs automatically and offers a great user experience. A very popular piece of chess software is what we will consider next.

FRITZ CHESS 12

The Fritz Chess software has been around a long time.  It offers a good user interface and can be set to play at almost any level. The interface offers all the usual refinements such as allowing moves to be taken back and so on. It can also assess your child’s playing strength once they reach a reasonable level. This is much more than a simple chess game for kids though, it is a full blown chess GUI and grandmaster strength chess engine.

Fritz 12 offers chess for kids and adults both. The user interface is quite straightforward and if you don’t like a particular element on screen it is easily removed.

Buy Fritz 12 from Amazon USA

Buy Fritz 12 from Amazon UK

Teaching Your Child to Play Chess

Over time your child will improve in their chess playing ability.  There are a number of books available to speed this process along and probably the best modern book on this subject is:  Chess for Children

It is a hardcover book with a reading age of 9-12. The books main character George is taught how to play chess by his pet alligator, Kirsty. Kirsty is the Grand Alligator of Chess, or so he says…

All in all a good, fun book to teach your child chess.

Computer Chess Online - Easy Chess Games for Kids