Building an army
- Robert Ek
- Nov 7, 2017
- 2 min read
Let's start with the tallest piece on the board ...
THE KING
The King is the tallest piece on the board and is the piece you should spend the most energy worrying about. The King is also the only piece that can never (EVER) be captured. If the King faces a serious threat from another piece, this is "check". If the King is under threat and his doom is sealed, that is "checkmate" and the game is over. In future posts we will explore various check and checkmate combinations.
This is a very long way of saying that for much of the game, the King spends a lot of time running away.
But, when a game drags out and the casualties for both White and Black pile up, the King becomes active and the hunted becomes the hunter. Here is a diagram featuring both the White and Black Kings.
Both Kings are in the middle of the board. Some basic movement rules to keep in mind with the King:
The King may move ONE SPACE in any direction;
This King may NEVER move onto a space where it can be captured by another piece (the King can never move INTO "Check");
If the King is threatened by another piece ("Check"), the player MUST move the King to safety immediately on their next turn. Moving a King out of danger is the ONLY legal move that can be played;
If special conditions are met, the King can move TWO spaces early in the game using a special tag-team technique with the Rook called "Castling". We will discuss Castling in detail when we talk about opening a chess game.
When the King is in Check and CANNOT ESCAPE, that is "Checkmate" and the game is over;
If the King is the only piece that can move, and is not in check but the only possible squares it can move to would result in check (capture), the game is called a "Stalemate" and results in a draw.
So, our diagram above shows two kings. Each king can move one space in any direction. The only space that is off limits to both of these kings are the squares that are under the other's control, in this case those are d5 and e5. If you haven't checked out the post on getting to know the chess board, you should check it out because those are concepts that will keep coming up in future posts.
So, to recap, chess is about board control and to accomplish what you are setting out to do you have to understand not only how pieces move but how they control the space around them. We then looked at rules for the King and what constitutes Check and Checkmate.
Next time we will look at the Rooks.
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