Let's Get Lost in Chess

Chess is a world-famous game from the Western origin. I always play chess with my sister since my mom bought me a chess set a few months ago.

Chess is a game which you play with a chessboard and some chess pieces. Chess pieces consist of one king, one Queen, two knights, two Rooks, two Bishops, and eight Pawns. It might be tricky to understand the rules to play chess but once you learn it, I bet you will have fun with this amazing game.

First, I will explain to you how to put chess pieces on the chessboard. Put the board before arranging pieces. If you see each corner of the chessboard, you can see numbers and letters. The numbers will be on the left side and letters will be in front of players. The chess pieces are arranged the same way each time. The second row is filled with all eight Pawns which are the smallest pieces. Rook (looks like a castle) goes to the corner, then Knight (looks like a horse) comes before Bishop which has a sad face on the head. Queen the tallest piece with a crown on the top always goes on her own matching color, and finally King which is also the tallest piece with a cross on the head is on the last square.

When you finish arranging all the chess pieces on the board, the player who has white pieces can move first, then the player with black pieces can move to follow the white piece until the game stops. Basically, one player should capture the other one’s King to win and this is ‘checkmate’.

The six kinds of chess pieces all move in a different way. First, Queen is the most powerful piece so it can move in any straight direction forward, backward, sideways, and even diagonally. But Queen cannot move through the other pieces. Second, Rook can move as far as the player wants, but only forward, backward, and sideways are available. Third, Knight can only move two squares in one direction, and then it can move one square to the sideways. (Just like alphabet letter ‘L’) Also, only Knight can move through other pieces. Fourth, King can move one square to forward, backward, diagonally, and sideways, too. Fifth, Bishop can move as far as the player wants, but only diagonal direction is allowed. Finally, Pawn can move one square forward and it can only capture the other pieces diagonally, but it cannot move backward. If you move your piece to capture King, you have to say “check” and when you capture King, you have to say “checkmate” and the game ends.

Today, I have explained about my favorite game ‘chess’ and I think the most interesting part to play this game is that nobody can expect how each player will move their pieces to win. I hope you have a chance to enjoy playing chess and have a lot of fun like I do!