Chess for Beginners: Basic Rules and Trivia

Chess Basics

• The first move of a chess game is always made by the player with white pieces.
• A game of chess is won when there is no way for the King to escape capture.
• The term for the first moves in a chess game is the Opening.
• Each player has two Knights at the start of a game.

Chess Pieces

• A Bishop is a piece that can only move diagonally.
• An alternate name for a Rook is a Castle.
• The only piece on the board that can promote is a Pawn.
• The piece that starts on f1 is the White King Bishop.

Chess Players

• Magnus Carlsen has been ranked world number-one since 2011.
• The highest title that a chess player can attain is a Grandmaster.
• Hou Yifan is the highest ranked female chess player and the youngest ever female Grandmaster.
• Bobby Fischer has the world record for the longest winning streak in master chess with 20 consecutive victories.

Chess History

• Chess originates from India.
• The first chess grandmasters were not given their titles by Tsar Nickolas for being finalists at the 1914 tournament in St.Petersburg.
• The cleric who invented the first folding chess board in the 12th century had to hide his invention because chess was banned by the church at the time.

Chess Variations

• There are more possible variations of chess games than there are atoms in the observable universe.
• The Shannon Number represents the estimated number of total move variations.
• The Panov-Botvinnik attack is a variation on the Queen's Gambit opening.

Chess Trivia

• The Queen's Gambit is a 2020 Netflix show that tells the story of chess prodigy, Beth Harmon, in her quest to become the world's greatest chess player.
• The word ‘Checkmate’ is derived from the Arabic word ‘shah mat’, which means "the king is dead".
• FIDE (Fédération Internationale des Échecs) acts as the governing body of international chess.
• Russia has the highest number of grandmasters.

Advanced Chess Concepts

• Zugzwang is when a player is put at a disadvantage simply by their obligation to move.
• En Passant is a move that can allow a pawn to capture a horizontally adjacent enemy pawn.
• The Elo System is the rating system used by FIDE.
• The Afrasiab Chessmen is the oldest known chess set, discovered in Uzbekistan in 1977.

Chess in Popular Culture

• The classic film The Seventh Seal centres around a returning Medieval soldier playing chess against the Grim Reaper.
• The film Queen of Katwe tells the true story of Woman Candidate Master Phiona Mutesi.