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Learn the Chess Rule
and Rule the Board!
from Lasker's Manual of Chess
2nd World Chess Champion E. Lasker
ChessCentral is where you can learn the official chess rule. Learning the chess game rule
can lead to a better enjoyment of the chess game. You will find all the chess rules here so that you can begin to
play the game and rule the board!
The Chess game and its rule has a history that at all times has awakened interest but
of which very little is known. We know some fables treating of the origin of the
game, fables that are true to history only in so far as they lay the place of
origin in Asia and the time of origin in a very distant past. Games similar to
Chess have been discovered on Egyptian sculptures. Written documents, a thousand
years old, referring to Chess, have been found. The game of Chess of those days
was not, however, the game that we now know. No doubt, Chess has undergone many
changes and who knows whether Draughts, or, more precisely, a game related to
Draughts, was not a forefather of our Chess.
The European career of Chess began a thousand years ago. At that time it was
an admired favorite in Spain, the game of the noble and the learned. In feudal
castles and at the courts of princes it was cultivated; it was praised in
artistic poems. For centuries it remained the aristocratic, noble, royal game,
accessible only to a refined taste. Later, it penetrated through Italy and
France, and at last it found a home wherever the foot of the white man trod.
Chess, as pointed out, has changed, but in its attire, in its forms only, by
no means in its essence, its idea. That has remained unchanged all through the
many centuries of its life. To discover this idea is therefore not difficult: at
all times Chess has had the will, the intent, the meaning of picturing a war
between two parties: a war of extinction, conducted according to rules, laws, in
a cultured manner, yet without clemency. This becomes evident from the rules of
the game almost at first sight.
Chess Rule
The Chess Board
Let's start chess rules by looking at the chess board. The most ancient and most enduring feature of Chess is certainly the board,
the table upon which it is played on the field of the Chess struggle. It
consists of 64 parts everyone a small square, in their totality composing a
large square. In eight rows and, perpendicularly thereto, in eight lines the 64
squares are ordered. Consequently one can draw a Chessboard by halving the side
of a big square three times in succession.
The technical process of producing a Chessboard is therefore very simple, and
the logical conception, neither is apprehension of the board complicated. The
perception of the 64 squares by the eye is no so easy, but it has been
facilitated by the use of color. The squares are alternately colored black and
white, so that from time immemorial the Chessboard looks as follows:
It is of importance that the student of Chess should know the board very
accurately; he should be able to visualize each square in its individual
position as well as in its relations to its neighboring squares. For this reason
the board has been divided into three regions: the middle and the two wings. The
left wing is composed of the first and second line to the left, the right wing
in the same way by the two extreme lines on the right hand, and the middle is
formed by the four remaining lines, the third, fourth, fifth and sixth. In the
center of this middle, four squares are situated, which form the intersection of
the fourth and fifth line with the fourth and fifth row. These four squares in
the center of the board have, for strategic purposes, the greatest significance.
To describe the events on the Chessboard briefly and exactly, a name has been
given to every one of the 64 squares; in olden times a descriptive name, in our
time, where the science of Nature and of Mathematics has become so prominent, a
mathematical name. This mathematical name reminds us of a system of coordinates
in the manner as introduced by Descartes. Accordingly, the eight lines, running
upwards, are successively designated by the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and
the eight rows running from left to right, are successively designated by the
letters a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h. The "a" line, "b" line, through the "h" line is
therefore a certain line; the first row, second row, through the eighth row is a
certain row. Since each square belongs to one line and to one row only, its line
and row unambiguously designate it. For instance, "b5" is that one square on the
b file that belongs to the fifth row. According to custom the letter precedes
the number: one writes b5, never 5b. Thus this notation has the advantage of
naming each square without ambiguity.
Of the other notation, the descriptive one, which is in use in many countries
and also in the Anglo-Saxon world, we shall speak more fully later on.
In the mathematical notation, the division of the board described above would
read as follows: the left wing "a" and "b" files, the right wing "g" and "h"
files, the middle c, d, e, f line, the center d4, d5, e4, e5. The boundary of
the board is formed by the "a" file, the "h" file, the first rank, the eighth
rank. The corners are a1, a8, h1, and h8.
The student should endeavor to acquire the habit of designating the squares
and of visualizing their position. There are many Chess players who fail merely
from their incapacity to master this geometrical task, not suspecting its value.
Chess Rule
The Chess Pieces
The armies combating each other on the board consist of Black and White
pieces. The White pieces form the one side, the Black pieces the antagonistic
side. The two sides are briefly called White and Black. The coloring of the
piece therefore determines its obedience and fidelity, unconditionally. A piece
never deserts to the enemy, nor does it ever rebel; it is faithful unto death.
True, if it falls in combat, it wanders from the board merely into a box where
the captured pieces are kept until the next game; then it celebrates a merry and
hopeful resurrection.
White and Black have equal forces. Each has a King, a Queen, two Rooks (or
Castles), two Bishops, two Knights, and eight Pawns. Either party, therefore,
counts sixteen pieces. The pieces stand on the board until they are captured,
each piece on one square, no two pieces on the game square. At the start of the
game the pieces are placed in a determined position shown hereafter, and then
they are moved, the players moving alternately. Thus a struggle of the Chess
pieces takes place according to determinate rules, until the King of a party is
captured by force or the contestants agree upon a drawn issue.
The pieces are usually carved of wood. The King has the appearance of a
crowned monarch, the Queen bears a smaller crown, the Rooks or Castles suggest
sturdy castles, the Bishops have a characteristic headdress, the Knights show a
horse's head, and the Pawn is like a man without distinction, a man of the
crowd, a common soldier.
The move consists in transferring a piece from one square to another.
White "moves" a white piece, Black a black one. Sometimes two pieces are thus
put into motion, namely, when a hostile piece is "captured," i.e., removed from
the board, or in "Castling," or in "Queening" a pawn, terms which will be
explained later. All of this is executed according to fixed rules which the
player is constrained to obey.
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