Chess For Dummies. Eade James

Chess For Dummies

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

FIGURE 1-11: The pawns take their posts on the front line.

If you set up your chessboard by using the preceding directions and it looks like the finished one in Figure 1-11, pat yourself on the back! You’re ready for a game.

A TRIP BACK IN TIME: THE ORIGINS OF CHESS

The true origins of chess are shrouded in the mists of prehistory, which is good because it allows people to say just about anything they want about how the game started without fear of contradiction. From the evidence that does exist, the best guess is that chess, or a game very much like it, originated in Northern India sometime around A.d. 600 and eventually migrated to Europe through China and Persia (modern-day Iran). The ancient Indian game was based on Indian armies and was undoubtedly a pastime for their rulers.

No doubt, this game, called chaturanga, was much like present-day chess. It was played on an 8-x-8-square board and used six different kinds of pieces. The Indian Army was led by the rajah (king) and his chief advisor, the mantri, sometimes referred to as the vizier. The army was represented by foot soldiers, cavalry, chariots, and elephants, and the game had corresponding pieces for all these leaders and warriors.

By the time the game got to Europe, it had changed considerably and continued to change until about the end of the 15th century. The changes basically made the game more familiar to the Europeans who were then playing it. The rajah became the king, the mantri the queen, the foot soldiers the pawns, the cavalry the knights, the chariots the rooks, and the elephants the bishops. Since that time, the game has been essentially stable. Nowadays, chess is played all over the world by the same rules established in Europe in the 15th century, under the control of the Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE), which is French for the International Chess Federation.

Chapter 2

Getting to Know the Pieces and Their Powers

IN THIS CHAPTER

Speeding along with the rook

Seeing the bishop outside church

Kissing the queen’s hand and bowing before the king

Mounting the knight

Giving the pawn the time of day

After years of teaching chess to elementary school children, I think I’ve found the easiest way to introduce the pieces. So in this chapter I use the same method. I start with the rook because its simple up, down, and side-to-side movement is easy to grasp. Then I move on to the bishop because it, too, moves in straight lines and boldly goes where the rook can’t. Kids seem to pick up these ideas right away. And what’s good for kids is certainly good for older students of the game, right?

After you understand the moves of the rook and the bishop, figuring out how the queen moves is a breeze. The queen simply has the combined powers of the rook and bishop. And the king follows his queen. He moves just like her, except only one square at a time. I leave the knight and the pawn for the end because they’re the trickiest to explain.

tip Keep in mind that chess is a science when you consider the pieces in isolation from one another, but it approaches an art when you combine the pieces in various ways. All pieces like to have company, but they’re fickle; for example, sometimes a queen and a knight are happy together, and sometimes they aren’t. No easy rules explain this relationship. The chess genius seems to know how to make the pieces work together seamlessly, but everyone else has to muddle along by trial and error. In Chapter 3, I consider the elements of chess from the scientific and artistic viewpoints – in isolation from one another and in combinations.

Acting Like a Chariot: The Rook

Sure, you may believe the rook is a tower or castle, but au contraire! In the history of chess, the rook actually developed from the chariot: This piece is both fast and strong, and therefore of considerable value. The rook appears a bit squatter than the other pieces, which partly accounts for the perception of it as a heavy piece (see the sidebar “Weighing in on chess heavies,” later in this chapter).

This heavy aspect can be taken too far, of course. The rook is far from a plodding piece, and the player who gets his rooks into the game most effectively often turns out to be the winner. Unfortunately, this piece begins the game tucked into a corner and usually has to wait for the other pieces to settle into their preferred squares before receiving any attention.

Figure 2-1 shows where the rooks go on the chessboard.

© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

FIGURE 2-1: At the start of a game, the rooks hold down the corners.

remember The rook has the freedom to move any number of squares, but only in straight lines up and down or side to side, as indicated by the rook on d5 in Figure 2-2a. Again, think of the chariot. After a chariot gets ahead of steam, turning corners isn’t easy. Have you ever seen Ben-Hur? The rook moves just like the chariot in that movie, but without the spikes.

FIGURE 2-2: A rook can move any number of squares unless a fellow soldier is blocking it.

In Figure 2-2b, you can see that the rook can’t move to a square occupied by one of its own pieces, in this case another rook on f5 – nor can it jump over the piece and move to any of the other squares along that rank.

In Figure 2-3a, a white rook and a black rook are ready for battle. The white rook can’t move beyond the black rook along that rank, but it can capture it by removing the black piece and taking its place, as in Figure 2-3b. (In chess notation, this move is written 1. Rxf5 – see Chapter 6 for details on notation.) This concept is the same for the other chessmen (and woman) with the exception of the king, which is immune to capture. But don’t think that you have to capture when given the opportunity. This isn’t checkers!

FIGURE 2-3: The white rook attacks and captures the black rook.

tip When new players discover the power of the rook, they sometimes decide to move the pawns that are in front of the rooks forward at the beginning of the game (these pawns are known as the rook pawns). This action has the advantage of increasing the space available to the rook but is usually a poor way to open the game. The rook must retreat when attacked by an enemy pawn, knight, or bishop because it’s too valuable to be lost in exchange for one of them. Time is then lost shuffling the rook to and fro while the enemy pieces come out in force. The best strategy, especially early in the game, is to move a minimum number of pawns, get the minor pieces (knights and bishops) out, and only then move on to the rooks.

WEIGHING IN ON CHESS HEAVIES

The rook and the queen are sometimes referred to as heavy or major pieces, because the rook and the queen, assisted by their own king,

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Chess For Dummies. Eade James