Want to Learn How to Play Chess?

An overwhelming majority of chess players read chess books or play on the internet. And many of these chess players do it for the sake of leisure, boredom or a bit of both.

So what is it that makes certain people want to learn how to play chess? Maybe it's just a curiosity or just another hobby they want to add to their "hobby collection". Also too, they might've gotten bored of checkers and decided to play something a little more challenging.

Well, chess is played on a chessboard, if didn't know, and with chess pieces on them. Did you know that both the board and the pieces are collectively known as chess sets? What a revelation!

But to give you more useful information, there are 2 sides: black and white. You control 16 pieces of ONE colour only and of which there are 6 different types of pieces. In order of increasing strength/power/usefulness, they are: pawn, king, knight, bishop, rook and queen.

Each piece has their own set of moves. For example the pawn is the only piece that can't move backwards, so therefore, it can only move forward. The knight is the only piece that moves in an L-shape (as you may or may not know), and so on.

And as you may have already guessed, each piece is designated a particular value, for example, a pawn is worth 1 point, the knight is worth 3 points and so on.

So you might be thinking that earning the most points in the game wins you a game of chess? The answer is... it depends. Chess is so complex that the people who invented it forgot to consider a more straightforward scoring system. Funny that! But, in all honesty, chess is not about trying to capture as many enemy pieces as possible - it's about defeating the enemy king (which by the way is priceless, in terms of value).

And because of that, you'd want to defend your king early on in the beginning phase of the game (which is better known as the opening), since it can be the subject of an attack. And if your king succumbs to opponent's dashing attack in the opening, then this is more famously known as checkmate (or losing to a crushing attack).

There are many ways to checkmate the enemy king - and there are even more ways to check a king! - but if chess was all about checkmate, then why would any chess player care about any strategic concepts or tactical combinations.

So chess is more than just checkmate, it's about learning to play the right moves, learning from your mistakes and of course, playing good (with an emphasis on the word good) chess.