Chess is a two-player strategy game played on a chequered board, where each side commands sixteen pieces and tries to trap the opponent’s king. It is one of the oldest games still played competitively worldwide, with organised events ranging from local club matches to the World Chess Championship.
Objective
The aim is to checkmate the opposing king, putting it under attack with no legal way to escape, block or capture the attacking piece. A game can also be won if the opponent resigns or runs out of time on the clock, and many games end in a draw rather than a decisive result.
Rules and regulations
- FIDE, the International Chess Federation, is the sport’s global governing body and publishes the official Laws of Chess, which cover everything from how pieces move to conduct during play.
- Each piece has its own movement pattern: pawns advance forward but capture diagonally, bishops move on diagonals, rooks along ranks and files, knights in an L-shape, and the queen in any straight line.
- Special moves include castling, en passant pawn captures, and promoting a pawn that reaches the far end of the board.
- Games can end in a draw through stalemate, repetition of the same position three times, insufficient material to checkmate, or the fifty-move rule, where fifty moves pass without a pawn move or capture.
- In India, the sport is governed by the All India Chess Federation, and interest has grown further since Gukesh D became world champion in 2024.
Equipment and playing area
- Chess is played on an eight-by-eight board of alternating light and dark squares, with a standard set of pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights and eight pawns per side.
- Competitive games use a clock, usually a digital one, to track each player’s remaining time under whatever time control has been set, whether classical, rapid or blitz.
Scoring
- A win earns one point, a draw half a point for each player, and a loss nothing.
- In tournaments, players accumulate points across several rounds, often under a Swiss or round-robin format, with the highest total deciding the winner and tie-break rules used to separate players level on points.
- Every rated game also affects a player’s Elo rating, the number used to measure playing strength.
