What Do the Chess Pieces Do?

The Chess Board

• Chess and checkers share the same game board, eight squares wide and eight squares deep, of alternating colors. The pieces are set up on opposite sides of the boat, on the two ranks of squares nearest the board's edges. The alternating colors of the squares have little influence on the individual pieces.

Pawns

• In chess, the pieces represent "cannon fodder," brute labor, the common soldier defending the castle, the gentry, the clergy and the chessboard's royalty, the king and queen. The common soldier is only permitted to move straight ahead, one square at a time, with certain exceptions.

  In the opening move for each side, each opponent may move one pawn two squares straight ahead. This is the pawn's greatest leap, usually taken to secure the four squares at the center of the board.

  As chess is a war game, with the goal of capturing the pieces of the opposing side. The pawn has two specific moves with which to eliminate an opposing piece: a move one square forward and one square to the side, on to a square occupied by an opponent, displacing the opponent the pawn lately faced diagonally, the corners of their respective squares touching.

  The other move to eliminate an opposing pawn is to be on the fourth rank of the board, when a diagonally opposing pawn declines to capture the pawn on the fourth rank. At that time, the pawn on the fourth rank moves forward one space and to the side one space, directly behind the enemy pawn and eliminating it.

Knights and Rooks

• The knights begin their journey across the chess board on the second square from the edge of the board, directly behind the pawns. The knights move two squares forward and one to the side, or one square forward and two to the side.

  At the corners of the boards, the rooks, or castles, stand guard. Rooks can move any number of squares forward, backward or to either side, but they may never move diagonally.

Bishops

• Because the colors of the board begin with a light-colored square in the left corner of the first rank of the board, the bishops, on the third square from each corner, are on opposite-colored squares, leaving the player with a white bishop and a black bishop, traveling only in diagonal lines and only on the color upon which they were originally stationed.

King and Queen

• When the king falls, the game is over. It can move in any direction, but only one space at a time under most circumstances. There is the move known as castling, which requires that neither king nor rook have moved previously. The king moves two spaces to his right or three spaces to his left to stand beside the rook. The rook then sweeps around the king to stand on his other side.

  The queen can move any number of squares, in any direction. This makes her the most powerful force on the board, potentially.