Special Chess Moves 2

The King has also a special move at his disposal. It is called ‘castling’ and is a defensive move, used to increase the King’s safety. Castling may be either ’short’ or ‘long’. Consider the white King on e1 (Ke1) and the white Rook on h1 (Rh1). ‘Short castling’ involves moving the King to g1 and simultaneously the Rook to f1. The whole procedure is considered to be one single move, not two (we denote short castling by ‘O-O’). However, there are some constraints before one can castle : both the King and the Rook must have not moved before, all in-between squares must be empty and both landing squares (f1 and g1 in the example) must not be threatened by the enemy pieces. In addition, the King must not be in check. If all these apply, one may castle. Long castling (denoted by ‘O-O-O’) is similar, the only difference being that the a-Rook is used instead. The ending squares are c1 for the King and d1 for the Rook. All the same applies for BLACK too, the corresponding squares being g8 and f8 for short castling and c8 and d8 for long castling.

The game starts always with WHITE to move and players taking turns. Moving a piece is obligatory, one cannot ‘pass’. The player who checkmates his opponent is the winner. There can also be a draw. This happens when no side has enough material to checkmate their opponent. If, for example, WHITE is left with the King and a Bishop and BLACK with only his King, there is no way that WHITE can checkmate BLACK and the game is drawn. A draw may also be agreed at any time. Other draw cases include the ‘triple repetition’ of the same position, the ‘50 moves rule’ (game is drawn if no pawn advance or capture has taken place during the last 50 moves) and ’stalemate’.

A player is stalemated if he has no valid moves, but he also is not in check. Recall that when one is in check and has no valid moves, he is ‘checkmated’ and he loses the game. Finally, a player who is able to be checking his opponent for as long as he wishes, may claim draw by ‘continuous check’, a special case of the 50 moves rule.

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