The queen is the most powerful piece in the game of chess, able to move any number of squares vertically, horizontally or diagonally. Each player starts the game with one queen, placed in the middle of the first rank next to the king. Because the queen is the strongest piece, a pawn is promoted to a queen in the vast majority of cases.
In chess, a fork is a tactic whereby a single piece makes two or more direct attacks simultaneously. Most commonly two pieces are threatened, which is also sometimes called a double attack. The attacker usually aims to gain material by capturing one of the opponent's pieces. The defender often finds it difficult to counter two or more threats in a single move. The attacking piece is called the forking piece; the pieces attacked are said to be forked. A piece that is defended can still be said to be forked if the forking piece has a lower value.
In chess, a pin is a situation brought on by an attacking piece in which a defending piece cannot move without exposing a more valuable defending piece on its other side to capture by the attacking piece. Moving the attacking piece to bring on the pin is called pinning; the defending piece so restricted is described as pinned.
The rules of chess are rules governing the play of the game of chess. While the exact origins of chess are unclear, modern rules first took form during the Middle Ages. The rules continued to be slightly modified until the early 19th century, when they reached essentially their current form. The rules also varied somewhat from place to place. Today, the standard rules are set by FIDE, the international governing body for chess. Slight modifications are made by some national organizations for their own purposes. There are variations of the rules for fast chess, correspondence chess, online chess, and Chess960.
This page explains commonly used terms in chess in alphabetical order. Some of these have their own pages, like fork and pin. For a list of unorthodox chess pieces, see Fairy chess piece; for a list of terms specific to chess problems, see Glossary of chess problems; for a list of chess-related games, see List of chess variants.
A fairy chess piece, variant chess piece, unorthodox chess piece, or heterodox chess piece is a chess piece not used in conventional chess but incorporated into certain chess variants and some chess problems. Fairy pieces vary in the way they move. Because of the distributed and uncoordinated nature of unorthodox chess development, the same piece can have different names, and different pieces the same name in various contexts. Almost all are usually symbolised as inverted or rotated icons of the standard pieces in diagrams, and the meanings of these "wildcards" must be defined in each context separately. Pieces invented for use in chess variants rather than problems sometimes instead have special icons designed for them, but with some exceptions, many of these are not used beyond the individual games they were invented for.
The zwischenzug is a chess tactic in which a player, instead of playing the expected move, first interposes another move posing an immediate threat that the opponent must answer, and only then plays the expected move. It is a move that has a high degree of "initiative". Ideally, the zwischenzug changes the situation to the player's advantage, such as by gaining material or avoiding what would otherwise be a strong continuation for the opponent.
In chess, a discovered attack is an attack revealed when one piece moves out of the way of another. Discovered attacks can be extremely powerful, as the piece moved can make a threat independently of the piece it reveals. Like many chess tactics, they succeed because the opponent is unable to meet two threats at once. While typically the consequence of a discovered attack is the gain of material, they do not have to do this to be effective; the tactic can be used merely to gain a tempo. If the discovered attack is a check, it is called a discovered check.
In chess, a tactic refers to a sequence of moves that limits the opponent's options and may result in tangible gain. Tactics are usually contrasted with strategy, in which advantages take longer to be realized, and the opponent is less constrained in responding.
En passant is a move in chess. It is a special pawn capture that can only occur immediately after a pawn makes a move of two squares from its starting square, and it could have been captured by an enemy pawn had it advanced only one square. The opponent captures the just-moved pawn "as it passes" through the first square. The result is the same as if the pawn had advanced only one square and the enemy pawn had captured it normally.
In chess, a cross-check is a tactic in which a check is played in response to a check, especially when the original check is blocked by a piece that itself either delivers check or reveals a discovered check from another piece. Sometimes the term is extended to cover cases in which the king moves out of check and reveals a discovered check from another piece ; it does not generally apply to cases where the original checking piece is captured, but it does apply to cases where the check is actually a checkmate.
A check is a condition in chess, shogi, xiangqi, and janggi that occurs when a player's king is under threat of capture on their opponent's next turn. A king so threatened is said to be in check. A player must get out of check, if possible, by interposing a piece between the threatening piece and the king, capturing the threatening piece, or moving the king to a square where it is no longer in check. If the player cannot move out of check, the game ends in checkmate and the player loses. Players cannot make any move that puts their own king in check.
In chess, a double check is a check delivered by two pieces simultaneously. In chess notation, it is almost always represented the same way as a single check ("+"), but is sometimes symbolized by "++". This article uses the latter convention for clarity.
In chess, a sacrifice is a move giving up a piece with the objective of gaining tactical or positional compensation in other forms. A sacrifice could also be a deliberate exchange of a chess piece of higher value for an opponent's piece of lower value.
The Buchholz system is a ranking or scoring system in chess developed by Bruno Buchholz in 1932, for Swiss system tournaments. It was originally developed as an auxiliary scoring method, but more recently it has been used as a tie-breaking system. It was probably first used in the 1932 Bitterfeld tournament. It was designed to replace the Neustadtl score.
In the tactics and strategy in the board game of chess, an exchange or trade of chess pieces is series of closely related moves, typically sequential, in which the two players capture each other's pieces. Any types of pieces except the kings may possibly be exchanged, i.e. captured in an exchange, although a king can capture an opponent's piece. Either the player of the white or the black pieces may make the first capture of the other player's piece in an exchange, followed by the other player capturing a piece of the first player, often referred to as a recapture. Commonly, the word "exchange" is used when the pieces exchanged are of the same type or of about equal value, which is an even exchange. According to chess tactics, a bishop and a knight are usually of about equal value. If the values of the pieces exchanged are not equal, then the player who captures the higher value of piece(s) can be said to be up the exchange or wins the exchange, while the opponent who captures the lower value of piece(s) is down the exchange or loses the exchange. Exchanges occur very frequently in chess, in almost every game and usually multiple times per game. Exchanges are often related to the tactics or strategy in a chess game, but often simply occur over the course of a game.
A battery in chess is a formation that consists of two or more pieces on the same rank, file, or diagonal. It is a tactic involved in planning a series of captures to remove the protection of the opponent's king, or to simply gain in the exchanges.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to chess:
This page explains commonly used terms in board games in alphabetical order. For a list of board games, see List of board games. For terms specific to chess, see Glossary of chess. For terms related to chess problems, see Glossary of chess problems.
