One mistake that beginners make is they never unleash the rook into the game. It can’t jump over material so at the beginning of the game, it also can’t move.Īt the beginning of the game the rook is surrounded by a pawn and a knight. The rook can move any number of squares up, down, and across. If you give up a 3 point piece in chess in exchange for your opponents rook, that is generally a good trade for you. While points don’t tell the entire story in a chess game, it does give some indication for how strong a piece is. OverviewĮach side starts with two rooks located in the four corners of the board. The king, however, can’t take the knight on b4 because that square is being defended by the rook.Įach side starts with two rooks placed on the four corners of the chess board. A you can see that the king can take the rook on e4 with Kxe4 because the rook is not defended by another piece. The one limitation the king has when moving is that it can’t move to a square that is being attacked by an opponent’s pieces. If there was a piece on e5 that the king is capturing then you will see the notation written Kxe5. The K represents the king and e5 represents the square it is moving to. When a king moves to a square you will see something like Ke5.

It can’t jump over material so at the start of a chess game there are no legal moves for the king to make since it is surrounded by other pieces. The king can move one square in any direction. If the e1 square is white, then you will need to rotate the board so the e1 square is dark. This should be the opposite color of the king. The white chess king begins on the e1 square and the black king begins on the e8 square.

The white king should be on a dark square.

The kings start on the e1 and e8 squares.

Chess piece names