Chess Pieces
Six pieces, six rules, and one board below where picking a piece up shows you every square it may go to. Nothing here needs memorising from a diagram - the board is the diagram, and it answers back.
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There are six kinds of chess piece and thirty-two pieces on the board at the start. The names, in the order people usually learn them: king, queen, rook, bishop, knight, pawn.
The board below is the whole starting position, with legality switched on. Pick up any piece and the squares it may go to light up. Both colours are playable, so you do not have to take turns to explore.
Tap any piece. The dots are every square that piece may legally move to.
Notice which pieces can do nothing at all from the start: the rooks, the bishops, the queen and the king are all walled in by their own pawns. Only the knights and the pawns have a first move, which is why every opening begins by pushing a pawn or developing a knight.
The six moves
| piece | how it moves | how many you start with | rough value |
|---|---|---|---|
| King | one square in any direction | 1 | priceless - it is never traded |
| Queen | any distance along a rank, file or diagonal | 1 | 9 |
| Rook | any distance along a rank or file | 2 | 5 |
| Bishop | any distance diagonally | 2 | 3 |
| Knight | an L: two squares one way, one the other - and it jumps | 2 | 3 |
| Pawn | one square forward, two on its first move, captures diagonally | 8 | 1 |
The values are for deciding trades, not for scoring: they are a habit of thought, and every one of them bends with the position. A bishop with two open diagonals beats a knight with nowhere to jump, and both can be worth less than a pawn one square from promoting.
The same six on an empty board
The starting position hides what the pieces can actually do. Here they are with room to breathe - one queen, one rook, one bishop, one knight and one pawn, nothing in the way.
The same pieces with the board to themselves. Pick each one up and compare how far it reaches.
Two things are worth doing on that board specifically. Pick up the queen and count: from the middle she covers more squares than a rook and bishop together, which is the entire reason she is worth nine. Then pick up the knight while its neighbours are still there, and notice that they do not stop it at all.
The knight is the odd one out
Five of the six pieces move along a path, and anything standing on that path stops them. The knight is defined by its destination instead: two squares in one direction and one in the other, arriving regardless of what it passed over.
That is why a knight is at its best in a crowded position and its worst in the corner, where the L only points four ways instead of eight. "A knight on the rim is dim" is a genuinely useful thing to remember from a diagram, and genuinely obvious once you have picked one up on a1.
The pawn is the other odd one out
A pawn is the only piece that:
- moves one way and captures another - straight ahead to move, diagonally to take, and it can do neither in reverse;
- never goes backwards, so every pawn move is permanent;
- turns into another piece when it reaches the far side, almost always a queen. Eight pawns are eight potential queens, which is why an endgame with one extra pawn is often already winning;
- captures a piece that is not on the square it lands on, in the one case known as en passant.
Try it
One knight on e2. Move it anywhere it is legally allowed to go.
Common questions
- What are the chess pieces called?
- King, queen, rook, bishop, knight and pawn. Each side starts with one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights and eight pawns - sixteen pieces each, thirty-two on the board. The rook is sometimes called a castle and the knight a horse, but neither is the proper name and you will not see them in a book.
- How many chess pieces are there?
- Thirty-two at the start: sixteen white and sixteen black. Each set is eight pawns and eight bigger pieces - the king, the queen, two rooks, two bishops and two knights - filling the two ranks nearest each player.
- How does each chess piece move?
- The rook moves any distance along ranks and files. The bishop moves any distance diagonally. The queen does both. The king moves one square in any direction. The knight jumps in an L - two squares one way and one the other - and is the only piece that can pass over others. The pawn moves one square forward, two on its first move, and captures diagonally.
- Which chess piece is the most powerful?
- The queen, by a distance: on an open board she reaches up to twenty-seven squares, more than a rook and a bishop put together. But the king is the most important, which is a different thing - the game is decided by the king's safety, and a queen is only ever a means to that end.
- What are chess pieces worth?
- The usual scale is pawn 1, knight 3, bishop 3, rook 5, queen 9, and the king is not given a value because it can never be traded. These are rules of thumb for deciding trades, not laws: a knight in the middle of the board can easily be worth more than a rook stuck behind its own pawns.
- Why can the knight jump over pieces?
- Because it is the one piece whose move is defined as a destination rather than a path. Every other piece slides along squares and can be blocked; the knight simply appears on the square two-and-one away. That is what makes it so useful in a crowded position, and it is descended from the horseman of the much older Indian game chaturanga.
Want to set this up yourself?
Chess Board Setup Open the board