"There is no sport more violent than chess."Garry Kasparov

Game's rules

The player controlling the white pieces is named "White"; the player controlling the black pieces is named "Black". White moves first, then players alternate moves. Making a move is required; it is not legal to skip a move, even when having to move is detrimental.

Play continues until a king is checkmated, a player resigns, or a draw is declared. In addition, if the game is being played under a time control players who exceed their time limit lose the game.
Chessboard

The king

The king moves one square in any direction.

Castling

Castling is the only case where you can move both the king and a tower: the king moves in his row of two squares towards his tower, and the tower jumps over his king to come and stand next to him . This double displacement is subject to the following conditions:

Long-range pieces

The rook, the bishop and the queen are long-range pieces, as long as they are not limited by any other piece, opposing or not.

The Knight

The knight is a "jumping" piece, he moves two squares in front of him (horizontally or vertically) then on a perpendicular square.
The Knight

The pawn

The pawn moves straight in front of him, one to two squares during his first movement and one square thereafter.
The pawn can only capture diagonally.

Pawn promotion

When the pawn arrives on the last row, it must transform into a piece of your choice: queen, rook, bishop or knight.

En passant

When a pawn advances two squares from its original square and ends the turn adjacent to a pawn of the opponent's on the same rank, it may be captured by that pawn of the opponent's, as if it had moved only one square forward.
This capture is only legal on the opponent's next move immediately following the first pawn's advance.
En passant

End of the game

Check

When the opposing king is threatened with capture in the next round, the player is "in check". The player must then remove this threat using one of the following possibilities:
  • move his king to a non-threatened space
  • capture the failed piece
  • interpose a piece between the king and the opposing piece

Checkmate

If the player whose king is checked has no solution to counter the threat, the king is then « checkmate » and the game ends on the victory of his opponent.

Stalemate

The game is said to be « stalemate » if there is no longer any legal movement, or there is no longer any possibility of winning the game for both players.
In this case, a new game is started to decide between the players (only one must win).

Resigning

Either player may resign at any time and their opponent will wins the game. Players typically resign when they believe they are very likely to lose the game.

Timing

A game played under time control will end as a loss for a player who uses up all of their allotted time, unless the opponent cannot possibly checkmate him.