(This is the first part in a series on chess-playing skills and tips to appear weekly in TeenAge and leading up to the Jamaica Observer Open Chess Tournament to be held April 20 and 21 at Immaculate High School. The popularity of the sport has grown phenomenally in Jamaica and the world in recent years, particularly after numerous studies in the US have shown that the game helps improve cognitive abilities, rational thinking and reasoning skills of even the least promising children.)

THE ancient game of chess, known as the game of kings, has captivated players for hundreds of years. It’s one of the most well-known games of the world, it spread throughout the Middle East, Asia, Europe and North America and the Caribbean. If you have always wanted to learn the game, but felt daunted by the rules, relax. Many people think chess is complicated, but it’s no more difficult to learn than many card games.

You might be thinking, ‘you must be stupid, your IQ must be so low!’ But if you are a good chess player, then people will still think that you’re smart. Along with nuclear physicists and brain surgeons, great chess players are seen as being among the intellectual giants of the planet. This is partly because chess involves the simultaneous use of strategy, mathematics, and risk-analysis, and partly because the game “seems” so hard to learn.

BUT FEAR THE CHESSBOARD NO MORE, for we will now teach you the basics of chess. No, we won’t teach you enough (as yet) to start scamming people in Half-Way-Tree, but you’ll at least be able to follow the game and make witty comments.

We’re first gonna teach you how to set everything up and know how everything moves before we even mention anything about strategy. But just so that you can keep it in mind, the piece called the “king” is the most important piece. The goal of the game is to capture your opponent’s king before your opponent captures yours. All of the rest is just details. Your king is all that matters. Long lives the king!

One player takes white and the other player takes black, although chess pieces are occasionally coloured differently. A traditional way of determining sides is for one player to hold a black pawn in one fist and a white pawn in the other. The other player then selects a hand and the pawn inside is the colour he or she will play. The advantage of selecting white is that white moves first in the game. The board is then set up. (See below)

Most beginners quickly remember the set-up of the pieces.

OK. So you set up the board. You’re pumped and raring to go. You may have even taken a break to grab a cheese sandwich. But now it’s time to buckle down and get serious: we’re gonna talk about how each piece is allowed to move. Every piece has different rules about how it can move.

The Rook

The rook is very easy: it only moves up and down, or side to side. It can’t go diagonal or sideways or anything else. It is not allowed to jump over any pieces.

The Bishop

The bishop can only move in a diagonal line for as many spaces as it likes until something blocks it. It also cannot jump over any other pieces during its move. Since bishops only move in diagonal lines, they’ll always stay on the same colour square that they started on (one starts on a black square, and one on a white)..

The Queen

The queen is a combination of the rook and the bishop: it can move as many spaces as it likes along a rank, file, or diagonal. That is one cool diva.

The King

The king is exactly like the queen, except, like all husbands, he’s not as powerful as his wife. He can move in any direction, but only for one box.

The Knight

OK, things get a little gooey now. The knight can only move in an L-shape. This means that it moves a total of three boxes: two straight, one sideways or one straight two sideways. This definitely needs an example. (See above diagram)

So you might be thinking “What a sucky piece! It can barely move!” Ah, that’s where you’re wrong. Unlike any other piece, the knight is always allowed to jump over other pieces to land in an empty square. It doesn’t matter whether it’s jumping over yours or your opponent, as long as the knight lands in an empty square, it’s legal. This makes it the only “major” piece that you can move without moving a pawn first (a major piece is any piece on the back row), because the knight can jump over the pawns.

The Pawn

The pawns are the first line of defence for your beloved king, but you have so many of ’em that an individual pawn is relatively worthless. Pawns are so weak, that they’re not even really called pieces. They’re just pawns. They’re soooooo weak… (how weak are they?…) they’re so weak that they can only move one space forward. That’s it. They can’t move backwards, sideways, diagonal, jump over other pieces, or do anything else fun. Only one space forwards. Poor pawns!

There are THREE exceptions to this rule:

1- If a pawn is coming out of its box for the first time, you have the option to move it either one or two spaces. It’s up to you.

2- When a pawn captures another piece, it can ONLY capture it by moving one box forward in a diagonal. It can’t capture a piece head-on. Imagine it like this: you’re holding a huge shield in front of you, so big, in fact, that you can only stick your spear out to the sides to hit something.

3- When your pawn reaches the opposite end of the board, it gets a “promotion”. This means that it can become any piece it wants to be, getting that piece’s rules, powers, and dental plan. Here’s a word of advice: promote your pawn to a queen. Sure, there might be times when the pros decide to not turn their pawns into queens (a strange action called “underpromoting”), but if you are reading this article, then you do not have to worry about such hibbledy-hobbledy. Just promote your pawn to a queen. What’s the benefit? Well, now you have two queens on the board! (Or if you lost your queen earlier, you get it back). In fact, if you get every pawn to the opposite end of the board, you can have nine queens on the board at the same time (the original plus the eight pawns).

Phew! We’re pooped. Over 2400 words and we haven’t even gotten to the point of the game yet. But it gets a lot nicer now. It’s time to learn how chess players end the game.

The point of the game is simple: Move your pieces around so that no matter where your opponent tries to move his king, it would get captured. It’s all about trapping the king. Pretty revolutionary, huh? (Get it? King? Revolution?)

Know the difference between check and checkmate

This is the difference between threatening to win and actually winning the game.

* When a king is threatened with capture, the player who threatens the king makes this known by saying “check”.

* To avoid capture, the king may be moved out of check, the threatening piece may be captured, or a piece may be moved between the king and the checking piece to effectively block check.

* If there is no way out of check, “checkmate” is called and the game is over.

* The king may never move into check.

There are several ways to end the game, but the result must either be white wins, black wins or draw. We already know that the game is won when one king is in checkmate. A draw results when a king is not in check but cannot move without putting itself into check. This is called stalemate and results in a tie game (draw). You may also offer a draw to your opponent and mutually agree to end the game in a tie.

WOW! That was pretty easy, huh? Well get right to it and start playing your first game! Next week we will teach you some other special rules and give you some cool tips on strategy.

Warren Elliott is technical manager of THE LIGUANEA CHESS CLUB, the national champion and an internationally recognised chess master. Contact him at www.chesswave.com, liguaneachess@hotmail.com or 977-3821/ 9704429.