How Pieces Move

Chess has only six kinds of pieces, and each one moves in its own completely fixed way — nothing changes depending on the situation. Once you know these six patterns, you can legally move any piece on any chessboard you'll ever see; everything more advanced on this site builds on exactly this.

Pawns: forward only, and captures are sideways-diagonal

A pawn moves straight ahead, one square at a time, and it can never move backward or sideways. On its very first move only, a pawn is allowed to advance two squares instead of one. The one genuine quirk: a pawn does NOT capture the way it moves. It captures diagonally, one square forward-left or forward-right, and it can only capture a piece actually sitting on one of those diagonal squares — never a piece directly in front of it.

Knights: an L-shape, and the only piece that can jump

A knight moves in an L-shape: two squares in one direction, then one square perpendicular to that (or the reverse — one square then two). It's the only piece on the board that can jump over other pieces entirely, friend or enemy, landing on the far square regardless of what's in between.

Bishops: any distance, one diagonal color forever

A bishop moves any number of squares along a diagonal, in any of the four diagonal directions, stopping only when it hits another piece or the edge of the board. Because diagonals never change color, a bishop that starts on a light square can only ever visit light squares for the rest of the game, and the same is true in reverse for a dark-squared bishop.

Rooks: any distance, straight lines only

A rook moves any number of squares along a rank (a horizontal row) or a file (a vertical column), stopping when it hits a piece or the edge of the board — the same 'any distance until blocked' idea as a bishop, just restricted to straight lines instead of diagonals.

The queen: a rook and a bishop combined

The queen is simply the most powerful piece because she combines both of the movement patterns above — any distance along a rank, file, or diagonal, in any of eight directions, until blocked. There's no separate rule to learn here beyond 'everything a rook can do, plus everything a bishop can do.'

The king: one square, any direction, with one big restriction

The king moves exactly one square in any direction — horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. The one rule that makes the king different from every other piece: it can never move to a square that's under attack by an enemy piece, because doing so would put it in check, which isn't a legal move at all.

Once you're comfortable with how each piece moves, chess notation explained covers how those exact moves get written down as letters and numbers on every page of this site.