Chess
War between kingdoms on sixty-four squares.
- Board
- 8 × 8
- Pieces
- 16
- Notation
- Algebraic
Meet the game
Chess descends from chaturanga, played in 6th-century India, travelling through Persia and the Arab world into Europe. Its modern rules settled in late 15th-century Spain, when the queen and bishop gained their long-range moves and openings turned sharp.
It is the most deeply studied board game in the world: opening theory branches into thousands of lines, the middlegame is about coordination and weaknesses, and the endgame is a realm of exact calculation.
Beginner questions
Learn chess piece moves, check, checkmate, stalemate, castling and en passant. Read beginner lessons, try tactics and practice against a browser chess engine.
What is the difference between check, checkmate and stalemate?
Check means the king is attacked and the threat must be removed. Checkmate means the attacked king cannot escape legally. Stalemate means there is no legal move but the king is not attacked; the game is drawn.
Should I memorize openings before learning the rules?
Learn legal moves and king safety first, then practice checks, simple mates and piece coordination. The beginner course starts with the board and pieces, without requiring opening memorization.
Rules and methods: FIDE — Laws of Chess
Tutorials
All tutorials →Chess Lesson 1: Pieces, Moves and Winning
Learn the board, six pieces, captures and the objective, then practise moves. Special rules and opening decisions follow in Lesson 2.
First steps · 7 steps · 35 min
Chess Lesson 2: Special Rules, Check and Openings
After Lesson 1, study castling, en passant, promotion, mate threats and draw conditions without repeating the board and piece introduction.
Beginner · 7 steps · 30 min
Sections
Puzzles
Chess puzzles: read the goal, play your answer, then see why with a step-by-step replay. New puzzles daily, plus rule questions.
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Glossary
Every common Chess term on one page, each with a plain explanation and an example, linked back to the beginner lessons.
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History
How Chess began and how its rules changed, in a short timeline — then try it yourself in the lessons and practice pages.
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Play
Three engine levels, or two players on one screen. Rules are adjudicated by Fairy-Stockfish, running in your browser.
Play →Loading board…
This browser can't run the engine in-page (SharedArrayBuffer needed). Two-player mode still works.