Chess is a game for two players on a board of 64 squares. Each player starts with 16 pieces. The player with the white pieces moves first. The goal is to checkmate the other player's king. The game began in northern India, as a game called chaturanga, around the 400s CE and certainly before the 600s.

Castling is a special move in which the king and a rook move together, once a game. The king always moves two squares. To castle, the king may not have moved, may not be in check, and must not pass through a square that is attacked.

There are special pawn moves too. A pawn that reaches the far side of the board is exchanged for a new queen, rook, bishop or knight, and most players choose a queen. In en passant, a pawn captures an enemy pawn that has just moved two squares, as if it had moved only one.

A game does not always end in a win. In stalemate, a player has no legal move but is not in check. The game is a draw. A game is also drawn if the same position happens three times. A player who runs out of time on the clock loses the game.

In the 1850s the American Paul Morphy toured Europe and beat almost every top player he met. William Steinitz was recognized as the first world chess champion. He held the title until 1894. Emanuel Lasker was champion for 27 years, the longest reign of any champion. In 1921 the Cuban Jose Raul Capablanca beat Lasker to become the third world champion.

In 1972 the American Bobby Fischer beat Boris Spassky, 12.5 to 8.5. Many people followed that world championship match. In May 1997 the computer Deep Blue beat world champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match in New York. On December 12, 2024, 18-year-old Gukesh Dommaraju of India beat Ding Liren of China in Singapore. He became the youngest world chess champion. The match score was 7.5 to 6.5.

Words to know

• castling: king-rook move
• stalemate: a draw
• champion: top winner
• checkmate: trapped king
• passant: in passing