Chess Sleep Facts

Slow your racing mind with the intricate yet incredibly repetitive world of chess, where pawns dream big and queens do all the work. Ideal for bedtime pondering or insomnia relief, this slow march across 64 squares should do the trick.

Transcript

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep podcast where I help you learn a little and sleep a lot.

I'm your host Benjamin Boster and tonight let's fall asleep learning about chess.

Chess is a board game for two players.

It is an abstract strategy game that involves no hidden information and no elements of chance.

It is played on a square board consisting of 64 squares arranged in an 8x8 grid.

The players,

Referred to as white and black,

Each control 16 pieces.

One king,

One queen,

Two rooks,

Two bishops,

Two knights,

And eight pawns,

With each type of piece having a different pattern of movement.

An enemy piece may be captured,

Removed from the board,

By moving one's own piece onto the square it occupies.

The object of the game is to checkmate,

Threatened with inescapable capture,

The enemy king.

There are also several ways a game can end in a draw.

The recorded history of chess goes back to at least the emergence of the chaturanga,

Also thought to be an ancestor to similar games like xiangqi and shogi in 7th century India.

After its introduction in Persia,

It spread to the Arab world and then to Europe.

The modern rules of chess emerged in Europe at the end of the 15th century,

With standardization and universal acceptance by the end of the 19th century.

Today chess is one of the world's most popular games with millions of players worldwide.

Organized chess arose in the 19th century.

Chess competition today is governed internationally by FIDE,

The International Chess Federation.

The first universally recognized world chess champion,

Wilhelm Steinitz,

Claimed his title in 1886.

Gukesh Dhammaraju is the current world champion,

Having won the title in 2024.

A huge body of chess theory has developed since the game's inception.

Aspects of art are found in chess composition,

And chess in its turn influenced western culture and the arts,

And has connections with other fields such as mathematics,

Computer science,

And psychology.

One of the goals of early computer scientists was to create a chess-playing machine.

In 1997,

Deep Blue became the first computer to beat a reigning world champion in a match,

When it defeated Garry Kasparov.

Today's chess engines are significantly stronger than the best human players,

And have deeply influenced the development of chess theory.

However,

Chess is not a solved game.

The rules of chess are published by FIDE,

Chess's world governing body,

In its handbook.

Rules published by national governing bodies,

Or by unaffiliated chess organizations,

Commercial publishers,

Etc.

May differ in some details.

FIDE's rules were most recently revised in 2023.

Chess sets come in a wide variety of styles.

The Standen pattern is the most common,

And is usually required for competition.

Chess sets come with pieces in two colors,

Referred to as white and black,

Regardless of their actual color.

The players controlling the color sets are referred to as white and black,

Respectively.

Each set comes with at least the following 16 pieces in both colors.

One king,

One queen,

Two rooks,

Two bishops,

Two knights,

And eight pawns.

The game is played on a square board of eight rows,

Called ranks,

And eight columns,

Called files.

Although it does not affect gameplay,

By convention the 64 squares alternate in color,

And are referred to as light and dark squares.

To start the game,

White's pieces are placed on the first rank in the following order from left to right.

Rook,

Knight,

Bishop,

Queen,

King,

Bishop,

Knight,

Rook.

Pawns are placed on each square of the second rank.

Black's position mirrors white's,

With equivalent pieces on every file.

The board is oriented so that the right-hand corner nearest each player is a light square.

As a result,

The white queen always starts on a light square,

While the black queen starts on a dark square.

This may be remembered by the phrases,

White on the right,

And queen on her color.

In competition,

The piece colors are allocated to players by the organizers.

In informal games,

Colors may be decided either by mutual agreement or randomly,

For example by a coin toss,

Or by one player concealing a white pawn in one hand,

And a black pawn in the other,

And having the opponent choose.

White moves first,

After which players alternate turns.

One piece is moved per turn,

Except when castling,

During which two pieces are moved.

In the diagrams in this article,

Dots mark the squares in which each type of piece can move if unoccupied by friendly pieces,

And there are no intervening pieces of either color,

Except the knight,

Which leaps over any intervening pieces.

While the sole exception of en passant,

A piece captures an enemy piece by moving to the square it occupies,

Removing it from play and taking its place.

The pawn is the only piece that does not capture the way it moves,

And it is the only piece that moves and captures in only one direction,

Forwards from the player's perspective.

A piece is said to control empty squares,

On which it could capture,

Attack squares,

With enemy pieces it could capture,

And defend squares,

With pieces of the same color,

On which it could recapture.

Moving is compulsory,

The player may not skip a turn,

Even when having a move is detrimental.

The king moves one square in any direction.

There is also a special move called,

Which moves a king and a rook.

The king is the most valuable piece.

It is illegal to play any move that puts one's king under attack by an opponent.

A move that attacks the king must be parried immediately.

If this cannot be done,

The game is lost.

A rook can move any number of squares along a rank or file.

A rook is involved in the king's castling move.

A bishop can move any number of squares diagonally.

A queen combines the power of a rook and bishop,

And can move any number of squares along a rank,

File,

Or diagonal.

A knight moves to any of the closest squares that are not in the same rank,

File,

Or diagonal.

Thus,

The move forms an L-shape,

Two squares vertically,

And one square horizontally,

Or two squares horizontally,

And one square vertically.

The knight is the only piece that can leap over other pieces.

A pawn can move forward to the unoccupied square immediately in front of it,

On the same file.

Or in its first move,

It can optionally advance two squares along the same file,

Provided both squares are unoccupied.

A pawn can capture an opponent's piece on a square diagonally in front of it by moving to that square.

It cannot capture a piece while advancing along the same file,

Nor can it move to either square diagonally in front without capturing.

Pawns have two special moves,

The en passant capture and promotion.

When a king is under immediate attack,

It is in check.

A move in response to a check is legal only if it results in a position in which the king is no longer in check.

There are three ways to counter a check.

Capture the checking piece,

Interpose a piece between the checking piece and the king,

Possible only if the attacking piece is a queen,

Rook,

Or bishop,

And there is a square between it and the king.

Move the king to a square where it is not under attack.

The object of the game is to checkmate the opponent.

This occurs when the opponent's king is in check,

And there is no legal way to get it out of check.

In casual games,

It is common to announce check when putting the opponent's king in check,

But this is not required by the rules of chess and is usually not done in tournaments.

Kings can castle once per game.

Castling consists of moving the king two squares toward either rook of the same color,

And then replacing the rook on the square that the king crossed.

Castling is possible only if the following conditions are met.

Neither the king nor the rook has previously moved during the game.

There are no pieces between the king and the rook.

The king is not in check and does not pass through or finish on a square controlled by an enemy piece.

Castling is still permitted if the rook is under attack,

Or if the rook crosses an attacked square.

Pawns have two special moves.

En passant,

When a pawn makes a two-square advance to the same rank as an opponent's pawn on an adjacent file,

That pawn can capture it en passant,

In passing,

Moving to one square behind the captured pawn.

A pawn can only be captured en passant on the turn after it makes a two-square advance.

There's an animated diagram in this article where the black pawn advances two squares from g7 to g5,

And the white pawn on f5 takes it en passant,

Landing on g6.

Promotion.

When a pawn advances to its last rank,

It is promoted and replaced with the player's choice of a queen,

Rook,

Bishop,

Or knight.

Usually,

Pawns are promoted to queens.

Choosing another piece is called underpromotion.

In the animated diagram in this article,

The c7 pawn is advanced to c8 and promoted to a queen.

If the required piece is not available,

E.

G.

A second queen,

An inverted rook is sometimes used as a substitute,

But this is not recognized in fide-sanctioned games.

A game can be won in the following ways.

Checkmate.

The opposing king is in check,

And the opponent has no legal move.

Resignation.

A player may resign,

Conceding the game to the opponent.

If,

However,

The opponent has no way of checkmating the resigned player,

This is a draw under the fide laws.

Most tournament players consider it good etiquette to resign in a hopeless position.

Win on time.

In games with a time control,

A player wins if the opponent runs out of time,

Even if the opponent has a superior position.

As long as the player has a theoretical possibility to checkmate the opponent were the game to continue.

Forfeit.

A player who cheats,

Violates the rules,

Or violates the rules of conduct specified for the particular tournament can be forfeited.

Occasionally,

Both players are forfeited.

There are several ways a game can end in a draw.

Stalemate.

If the player to move has no legal move,

But is not in check,

The position is a stalemate,

And the game is drawn.

Dead position.

If neither player is able to checkmate the other by any legal sequence of moves,

The game is drawn.

For example,

If only the kings are on the board,

All other pieces have been captured,

Checkmate is impossible,

And the game is drawn by this rule.

On the other hand,

If both players still have a knight,

There is a highly unlikely,

Yet theoretical possibility of checkmate,

So this rule does not apply.

The dead position rule supersedes an older rule,

Which referred to insufficient material,

Extending it to include other positions where checkmate is impossible,

Such as blocked pawn endings,

Where the pawns cannot be attacked.

Drawn by agreement.

In tournament chess,

Draws are most commonly reached by mutual agreement between the players.

The correct procedure is to verbally offer the draw,

Make a move,

Then start the opponent's clock.

Traditionally,

Players have been allowed to agree to a draw at any point in the game,

Occasionally even without playing a move.

More recently,

Efforts have been made to discourage early draws,

For example by forbidding draw offers before a certain number of moves have been completed,

Or even forbidding draw offers altogether.

Threefold repetition.

This most commonly occurs when neither side is able to avoid repeating moves without incurring a disadvantage.

The three occurrence of the position need not occur on consecutive moves for a claim to be valid.

The addition of the fivefold repetition rule in 2014 requires the arbiter to intervene immediately and declare the game a draw after five occurrences of the same position,

Consecutive or otherwise,

Without requiring a claim by either player.

Five rules make no mention of perpetual check.

This is merely a specific type of draw by threefold repetition.

50 move rule.

If during the previous 50 moves no pawn has been moved and no capture has been made,

Either player can claim a draw.

The addition of the 75 move rule in 2014 requires the arbiter to intervene and immediately declare the game drawn after 75 moves,

Without a pawn move or capture,

Without requiring a claim by either player.

There are several known endgames where it is possible to force a mate,

But it requires more than 50 moves before a pawn move or capture is made.

Examples include some endgames with two knights against a pawn,

And some pawnless endgames such as queen against two bishops.

Historically,

FIDE has sometimes revised the 50 move rule to make exceptions for these endgames,

But these have since been repealed.

Some correspondence chess organizations do not enforce the 50 move rule.

Draw on time.

In games with a time control,

The game is drawn if a player is out of time and no sequence of legal moves would allow the opponent to checkmate the player.

Draw by resignation.

Under FIDE laws,

A game is drawn if a player resigns and no sequence of legal moves would allow the opponent to checkmate that player.

In competition,

Chess games are played with a time control.

Time controls are generally divided into categories based on the amount of time given to each player,

Which range from classical time controls,

Which allot about two hours or more to each player,

And which can take upwards of seven hours,

Even longer if adjournments are permitted,

To bullet chess,

In which players receive less than three minutes each.

Between these are rapid chess,

10 to 60 minutes per player,

Popular and amateur tournaments,

And blitz chess,

3 to 10 minutes,

Popular online.

Non-classical chess is sometimes referred to as fast chess.

Time is controlled using a chess clock with two displays,

One for each player's remaining time.

Analog chess clocks have been largely replaced by digital clocks,

Which allow for time controls with increments.

There are some aspects unique to online chess.

A pre-move allows a player to submit a move on the opponent's turn,

Which gets played automatically if possible,

Using little to no time.

Pre-moves,

Alongside the relative ease of digital inputs,

Make faster time controls feasible online.

Time controls are also enforced in correspondence chess competitions.

A typical time control is 50 days for every 10 moves.

Time is usually allotted per move in online correspondence chess.

Historically,

Many different notation systems have been used to record chess moves.

The standard system today is short-form algebraic notation.

In this system,

Files are labeled A through H,

And ranks are labeled 1 through 8.

Squares are identified by the file and rank they occur on.

G3 is the square on the G file in the third rank.

In English,

The piece notations are K,

King,

Q,

Queen,

R,

Rook,

B,

Bishop,

And N,

Knight,

And is used to avoid confusion with king.

Different initials are used in other languages.

Moves are recorded as follows.

Notation of piece moved,

Destination square.

For example,

QG5 means queen moves to G5.

No letter initial is used for pawns,

So E4 means pawn moves to E4.

When multiple moves could be rendered the same way,

The file or rank from which the piece moved is added to resolve ambiguity.

E.

G.

,

NGF3 means knight from the G file moves to the square F3.

R1E2 means rook on the first rank moves to E2.

If a move may be disambiguated by rank or file,

It is done by file,

And in the rare case that both are needed,

Squares are listed normally.

E.

G.

,

QH4XE1.

If the move is a capture,

X is usually inserted before the destination square.

Thus,

BXF3 means bishop captures on F3.

When a pawn makes a capture,

The file from which the pawn departed is often listed even when no disambiguation is necessary.

For example,

EXD5.

If a pawn moves to its last rank,

Achieving promotion,

The piece chosen is indicated after the move.

For example,

E1 equals Q or E1Q.

Castling is indicated by the special notations 0 to 0 for kingside.

Castling is indicated by the special notations 0 to 0 for kingside castling and 0 to 0 to 0 for queenside castling.

A move that places the opponent's king in check usually has the notation plus suffixed.

Checkmate can be indicated by a suffixing hash sign.

At the end of a game,

1 to 0 means white 1,

0 to 1 means black 1,

And half to half indicates a draw.

Chess moves can be annotated with punctuation marks and other symbols.

For example,

An exclamation point indicates a good move,

Two exclamation points,

An excellent move,

Question mark,

A mistake,

Two question marks,

A blunder,

And an exclamation point followed by a question mark,

An interesting move that may not be best,

Or question mark to exclamation point,

A dubious move not easily refuted.

Scholars mate.

Moves are written as white-black pairs preceded by the move number and a period.

Individual white moves are also recorded this way,

While black moves are rendered with an ellipsis after the move number.

For example,

One variation of a simple trap known as the scholar's mate can be recorded 1 e4 e5 2 qh5 question mark exclamation point nc6 3 bc4 nf6 question mark question mark 4 qxf7 hashtag The move 3 nf6 question mark question mark is recorded as a blunder.

As it allows 4 qxf7 hashtag checkmate.

Games or sequences may be recorded in portable game notation,

Pgn,

A text-based file format with support for annotative symbols,

Commentary,

And background information such as player names.

It is based on short-form English algebraic notation incorporating markup language.

Pgn transcripts,

Stored digitally as pgn.

Pgn files,

Can be processed by most chess software and are easily readable by humans.

Variants of algebraic notation include long algebraic,

In which both the departure and destination square are indicated,

Abbreviated algebraic,

In which capture signs,

Check signs,

And ranks of pawn captures may be omitted,

And figurine algebraic notation,

Used in chess books and magazines,

Which uses graphic symbols instead of initials to indicate pieces for readability regardless of language.

Until about 1980,

The majority of English-language chess publications use descriptive notation,

In which files are identified by the initial letter of the piece that occupies the first rank at the beginning of the game.

In descriptive notation,

The common opening move 1 e4 is rendered as 1 p to k4,

Pawn to king 4.

Another system is ICCF numeric notation,

Recognized by the International Correspondence Chess Federation,

Though its use is in decline.

In tournament games,

Players are normally required to keep a score,

Which is a written record of the game.

This is a requirement in all FIDE-sanctioned games played at classical time controls.

For this purpose,

Only algebraic notation is recognized by FIDE,

Though variants,

Such as long algebraic,

Are acceptable.

Game scores recorded in a different notation system may not be used as evidence in the event of a dispute.

Chess has an extensive literature.

In 1913,

The chess historian H.

J.

R.

Murray estimated the total number of books,

Magazines,

And chess columns in newspapers to be about 5,

000.

V.

H.

Wood estimated the number as of 1949 to be about 20,

000.

David Hooper and Kenneth Wilde write that,

Since then,

There has been a steady increase year by year of the number of new chess publications.

No one knows how many have been printed.

Significant public chess libraries include the John G.

White Chess and Checkers Collection at Cleveland Public Library,

With over 32,

000 chess books and over 6,

000 bound volumes of chess periodicals,

And the Chess and Drafts Collection at the National Library of the Netherlands,

With about 30,

000 books.

Reviews

I remember playing chess with my grandfather, it’s a good memory. Thanks for the story, I didn’t hear much of it though! 😻