Bruce Pandolfini - Lets Play Chess: A Step by Step Guide for New Players

Chess is by far the most popular board game in the world. There are millions of players of all ages and the number keeps growing. This is my attempt to lure you to a challenging and fascinating pastime. It's based on the very same lessons I have given to thousands of beginners. Their questions and problems have shaped it. Moreover, some of the best ideas in the book were actually suggested by new players!

I have tried to be as plain and uncomplicated as possible. Just as certain individual problems are made simpler by partitioning them, I saw a correspondence with learning chess itself. Thus to make your journey a smoother one the fundamentals have been broken down into short, logical statements. Each idea is numbered, ordered, and clearly stated. In most sections statements are linked in graded sequence, with the easier ones preceding the harder. Yet this design is sometimes abandoned for elucidation or aptness. I hope you find the format simple enough to follow and the occasional digressions engaging and clarifying. If the overall approach works you should feel yourself learning step by step.

Throughout I have aimed to show how chess players think about their moves. All the ideas are expressed in words, so you don't have to struggle with variations of chess notation before seeing where a thought is going. Explanation has taken precedence over calculation, and the stress has been placed on understanding, not memory. There are also plenty of diagrams for almost every idea to provide visual reinforcement. So you should be able to read this book even without a chess set, though you might want to get one anyway. I hear they're useful for play and study. But then you don't really need a physical chess set in today's computer world of software and the Internet. It's all there, on the electronic highway, with access to thousands of sites and zillions of potential players.

How should you use Let's Play Chess? To get the most from your efforts, start with the first statement and begin reading in numbered order. Try to cover entire sections in one reading. If a particular point seems confusing don't get bogged down. Just read on. You can always come back after you've thought about it and learned more. Besides, you should be able to read this book and play chess without understanding every single detail right away. And that's one of the charms of chess. Whether you play at the elementary level, with command over almost nothing, or at the top ech elon, as an exponent of the game's greatest principles, it's hard not to lose yourself in an engaging and compelling miniature universe. But that you can judge for yourself starting with statement number one.

Bruce Pandolfini

New York, New York

January 2009

I've had enough practice at this and still don't know how to do it. Unquestionably without the efforts of certain people Let's Play Chess wouldn't exist, and if it could exist without them it would be something else and something less. For their suggestions and creative work on the first edition I'd like to thank Roselyn Abrahams, Carol Ann Caronia, Bob Hernandez, Paul Hoffman, Idelle Pandolfini, and Iris Rosoff. I'd mention Ludwig Wittgenstein, but that would be a stretch. For their invaluable work on the second edition my appreciation goes to Mark Donlan, who painstakingly set and designed the present text and layout, and Hanon Russell, whose astute editing and thoughtful insights have fueled, guided, and overseen the entire second edition. While all of these able and talented people have improved my effort with their special stamp, the deficiencies in Let's Play Chess are entirely mine. Everything else must be passed over in silence.

1. Chess is a game of skill played by two people on a board of sixty-four squares. The board is the same one used for checkers.

2. The squares of the chessboard are alternately colored light and dark and that helps the players see better.

Black

White

3. The players, starting at opposite ends of the board, take turns by moving their own armies, one soldier on a turn.

4. Each army or side consists of sixteen soldiers. In common parlance these forces are referred to as "the pieces.

5. Indeed, a chess set is ordinarily said to have a "board and pieces." Yet chess players prefer to distinguish between pieces and pawns for a variety of practical reasons.

6. So herein unit will be used to mean either an individual piece or pawn.

7. All the forces constitute an element of the game known as material.

8. The lighter color material or side is always called White and the darker one Black, regardless of their actual colors.

9. The players take turns to move. White moves first, then Black, then White, then Black, and so on.

10. Turns are taken by moving or capturing.

11. A move is the transfer of a unit from one square to another.

12. Units are placed in the middle of squares and not on their intersections, as stones are in the game of go.

13. A move can be legal or illegal.

14. A legal move abides by the rules of the game: it can be played. An illegal move violates the rules of the game: it can't be played.

15. Illegal moves must be taken back and replayed.

16. A capture is a move that eliminates an opponent's unit from the board.

17. Individual units are not jumped, as checkers are in the game of checkers or draughts. Rather they are replaced by the capturing chess unit and removed.

18. Unlike checkers, in chess you are not forced to capture opposing forces. Instead it's a matter of choice, unless the situation requires that an opponent's particular unit be captured (for instance, if it's touched or if no other legal move is possible).

19. Any piece or pawn may capture any enemy unit provided it's a legal move.

20. No move or capture has to be played unless it's the only way to save the king from checkmate or if there's a touch-move infraction (more on both later).

21. You can't:

(a) capture your own forces;

(b) place two of your own units on the same square;

(c) move two of your own units on a separate turn (except in the act of castling, which will be explained later);

(d) capture more than one of your opponent's units on a single turn;

(e) move a unit in two different directions on the same turn (except for the knight, which is yet to be explained).

22. The chessboard is the battlefield on which the two generals - you and your opponent - meet. It's a large square made up of sixty-four smaller squares (there are eight rows of eight squares each).

Diagram 1

The chessboard

23. The smaller squares are arranged in three different kinds of rows: