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Castling

Castling is a rule that was introduced a long time ago. It was created to help you get your king to safety so that the game lasts longer. It was also created so that you may get your rooks to the center, where you want them, more quickly. It is the only move in chess in which you move two pieces at the same time. It involves the rook and the king. Here's how the rule works:

When it is you turn, you simply move your king two spaces to the left or to the right and place your rook on the other side of it. There are many rules, however, that you must follow. These are:

Once your king has moved, you are unable to castle, even if you move your king back to the square it started on.
Once you have moved one of your rooks, you may not castle on that side, but you may castle on the other side as long as that rook hasn't moved.
You may not castle out of check (described later), but you may castle on a later move, once you get out of check (also described later).
You may not castle through check, meaning, if one of the two squares that you must cross to get to the resulting square for the king is being attacked by a piece, you may not castle. You may also castel into check, that is, where the square the king ends up is attacked by the opponent

Now, the queenside castle. You won't see this side castle as often as kingside, but it can really change the outcome of a game, castling an unexpected way, we will dicuss this later on (you've been hearing that a lot, doesn't it just make you want to skip ahead and see what's up there? Just hold back, all in due time :) )

Here is an example of a position where white cannot castle. Here, white would be castling through check by the rook on d8 so it's not possible to castle until the rook is moved. This can be a very useful tactic, to keep your opponent in the center where he is more vulnerable to attack. If you are having trouble grasping the castling through check rule, think of it this way, although you're only taking one move to complete it, you're really trucking your king over the terrain to where it ends up. If there is a firing squad across the distance the sees the leader as he trucks over the terrain ie: the rook on d8, then they will shoot him before he gets to where he was trying to go. If you didn't get it, do you get it now? I hope so. :-)

En Passant

Ok, now we've left our language and we have to understand French? Why couldn't they just make things simple? Because then it wouldn't be any fun! En Passant, as you probably guessed, is a French phrase meaning "In Passing" which is appropriately named for the rule that it stands for. This is quite a tricky rule (hey, did I say chess was easy?) so just bear with me (again) as I explain this one.

Ok, so we know that on a first move, a pawn can move two squares, right? And after you follow this link, you'll know how a pawn captures, if you haven't done so already. Now you can learn what on earth En Passant, or In Passing has to do with armies and rooks and kings and queens. En Passant is the newest rule of modern day chess. When the rule that a pawn could move two squares on its first move was introduced to help speed and liven up the game, a new problem aroused. When a pawn reached the fifth rank, the opposing player could move two squares and "dodge a fight" also known as passar battaglia after the Italians who made use of this technique. To prevent this, the En Passant rule was intrdoduced. Here's how it works:

If there is a pawn on the fifth rank and an opposing pawn invokes the two squares on the first move rule, then the pawn can take the other pawn as if it had moved up only one space. You treat it exactly like if it had moved one. You move your pawn diagonally and you take the pawn from where it was. The diagrams below will help you to understand. NOTE: You can only invoke this rule immediately after the pawn has moved two squares, if you choose not to invoke the rule, you lose the privilege.

Alright, those are all the special rules, with the exception of pawn promotion which is discussed in the Interesting Cases section of the tutorial. Why not check that out so you now all the rules?

lucky individuals have learned how to play better chess since this page hit the web on 06/28/97.