Standard chess

What this variant is

Standard chess follows the 2023 edition of the international Laws of Chess, published by the world federation. Both sides begin from the ordinary array: rooks in the corners, then knights, then bishops, with the queen on her own colour and the king beside her, and eight pawns in front. White moves first and the players alternate.

If you have never played, read the full rules page first. This page assumes you know how the men move and sets out the details the engine actually checks.

The special moves, in full

Castling is allowed only when the king and the chosen rook have both never moved, every square between them is empty, the king is not currently in check, and neither the square the king crosses nor the square it lands on is attacked. The rook may be attacked, and on the queenside it may pass over an attacked square. Kingside, the king goes to g1 or g8 and the rook to f1 or f8. Queenside, the king goes to c1 or c8 and the rook to d1 or d8.

Capture in passing is available on the move immediately after an enemy pawn has used its two-square advance to pass a square your pawn attacks. Your pawn steps onto that skipped square and the enemy pawn is removed. Wait one move and the right is gone.

A pawn reaching the last rank is replaced, in the same move, by a queen, rook, bishop or knight of its own colour. All four are always available, whatever has already been captured.

Winning

• Checkmate. The enemy king is in check and no legal move answers it. The game ends at once.
• Resignation. A player concedes.
• Timeout. A player’s clock runs out, and the opponent has at least enough material to mate with. If they do not, see the draws below.

Drawing

• Stalemate. The player to move has no legal move and is not in check.
• Agreement between the players.
• Threefold repetition of the position, with the same side to move and the same options available.
• The fifty-move rule: fifty moves by each player with no capture and no pawn move.
• A dead position, in which neither side could force mate by any series of legal moves. King against king, king and bishop against king, and king and knight against king are the ordinary cases.
• A timeout that the opponent has no material to punish. The game is drawn rather than lost.

Sources

Everything on this page is written from scratch. These are the works it leans on, and what each one settles.

• FIDE Laws of Chess, 2023 edition

  The rule set this variant implements. It settles castling’s conditions, the timing of capture in passing, which positions count as dead, and the treatment of a timeout against an opponent with no mating material.