“It’s more math than art,” says Danny Machuca, a senior chess associate at the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis. Though “checkmate” might not be a word in your vocabulary, it soon could be with help from Machuca, ranked Class A, in the world’s 95th percentile. He helped piece together the lingo.
Opening/Middle Game/End Game: 1. Work to get your king to safety, then give your pieces something to do (i.e., move them out, one by one). 2. Start to make more aggressive plays, and break the boundary of the two halves—the two kingdoms. 3. Move with checking in mind, and aim to reach the back rank (the back row).
En Passant: A move used by more advanced players that harks back to more archaic rules, when the pawn was only allowed one space on the first move. This allows a pawn that lands next to another pawn to capture it laterally rather than diagonally.
4 Center Squares: Move your pieces toward the board’s center squares, so they’ll have maximum mobility. Control the center while working to move toward safety.
Promotion: If one of your pawns reaches the back rank, you may replace it—or promote it—with a more powerful piece, usually the queen, which then has more mobility to check. (Promotion to anything other than a queen is called “underpromotion.”)
F2 and F7: These spaces, on each side of the board, are the most vulnerable (they are occupied by pawns) until castling (see below) occurs.
Castling: A multistep approach to protecting your king. It’s the only time a king may move two spaces and the rook may jump a piece. Move the pawn to make way for the bishop, then move out the knight and bishop, making way for the king and rook to jump the king’s hat.
A Chess Piece Primer
Pawn: Pawns may only move forward one square, with two exceptions: 1. On the first move, they may move forward two squares. 2. Pawns may move forward diagonally when capturing an opponent’s chess piece.
Rook: The rook may move forward, backward, left, or right in straight lines from one to seven squares.
Knight: The knight moves in an L-shaped pattern, either one square in a given direction and then two in the perpendicular direction or vice versa. The knight may jump over other pieces to reach its destination.
Bishop: The bishop may move diagonally in a straight line for any number of squares.
Queen: The queen may move in any direction on a straight or diagonal path but may not jump over other pieces.
King: The king may move one square in any direction. The goal is to avoid putting the king in “check,” any position in which it can be captured by the opponent.
The Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis hosts the U.S. Championship April 17–30.
