The game of chess is one of the most thoughtful games ever. It solely depends on your ability to think in a crafty manner. This makes the game challenging and no wonder it could even take hours to finish off just a game. Trust us, chess is a nerd’s game, and winning is up to your intelligence. However, a “Fool’s mate,” is an incredible way of slaying the king in just a couple of moves. Like seriously!
Related media: Chess – Fool’s Mate (2 Move Checkmate)
Get Set, Let’s Move
Chess is a two-player strategy board game played on a chessboard — a checkered game board with 64 squares arranged in an 8 by 8 grid. It’s eight rows (horizontal axis) are called ranks, denoted by numbers 1 to 8; whereas the other eight columns (vertical axis) are called files, denoted by letters A to H. The colors of the 64 squares alternate and are referred to as light and dark squares.
It’s played with six pieces, namely: the King, Queen, Bishop, Knight, Rook, and Pawn (in order of their hierarchy in the game); but each player has 16 pieces in playing with — the king, queen, two bishops, two knights, two rookies, and eight pawns. The game’s initial position starts with two ranks; first rank: rook, knight, bishop, queen, king, bishop, knight, and rook; and the second rank: pawns — for each player in that order. The two opponents are called the White and Black player depending on the color of their pieces.
Move Along With The Rules
Rules of the game: Each piece has a special move depending on it’s hierarchical place:
- The King: It moves one square in any direction. It also has a special move called castling that involves also moving a rook.
- The Queen: It combines the power of a rook and bishop and can move any number of squares along a rank, file, or diagonal, but cannot leap over other pieces.
- The Bishop: It can move any number of squares diagonally, but cannot leap over other pieces.
- The Knight: It moves to any of the closest squares that are not on the same rank, file, or diagonal, (forming an L-shape: two squares vertically and one square horizontally, or two squares horizontally and one square vertically). It’s the only piece that can leap over other pieces.
- The Rook: It can move any number of squares along a rank or file, but cannot leap over other pieces. Along with the king, it’s involved during the king’s castling move.
- The Pawn: It can move forward to occupy a blank square immediately in front of it on the same file, or on it’s first move it can occupy two blank squares along the same file; or it can capture an opponent’s piece on an adjacent square diagonally in front of it, by moving to that square. A pawn has two special moves: the en passant capture and promotion.
With these rules in mind, players move the pieces around on the board. The main objective of the game is to capture the King of your opponent, so you have to be a king’s slayer first. Chess sounds more like Game of Thrones, getting to slay the King and taking the Seven Kingdoms, kind of.
Fooled Ya Mate
The Fool’s Mate, also known as the Two-Move Checkmate, is the checkmate in the fewest possible number of moves from the start of the game. This can be achieved only by Black player right at the beginning, who can deliver checkmate on move 2 with the queen. Fool’s Mate received it’s name because it can only occur if White commits an extraordinary blunder. Even among rank beginners, the mate almost never occurs in practice.
How to play: If you’re not familiar with chess rules, read over the rules again before you continue reading further. (Take note of the positioning of the pieces in respect to their ranks and files).
The game always starts with the White player moving first. Let’s say you’re playing with a friend, how cute, and you happen to be the White player, you can either win or lose easily by what moves you start with. If you happen to move White Pawn F2 up to occupy square F3, then your friend also happens to move Black Pawn E7 up to occupy square E5, that’s alright, you’re not bad.
But, if your next move is White Pawn G2 up by two spaces to occupy square G4 — this move leaves your White King E1, vulnerable — whereas your friend’s next move is the Black Queen E8, moving diagonally left (your friend’s left) to occupy square H4, then at square H4, the Black Queen has to only move diagonally to the right (your friend’s right), and slay your White King E1.
Checkmate!
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Written by: Nana Kwadwo, Mon, Jan 14, 2019.