Special Moves & Rules

Even though chess is mostly a well known game, there are some rules, those are not known by many, even some frequent players.

Touch-Move Rule

This rule is not a new rule or a special rule for any specific kind of chess game. Even though there is a “take the last move back” feature in many computer chess game, this rule shouldn’t be an exception. This rule is the Touch-move rule.

Rule is simple enough; if you touch a piece on the board while it’s your turn, you must play that piece for that turn. If you lift a piece and leave it in the same place, your turn ends. This rule is abused a lot in regular chess games but it shouldn’t. Many inexperienced players find it hard not to take back the -late-realized-last mistake that they made. But changing your idea in the middle of a move or changing the last move you did is not a nice thing to do because of the nature of the game.

J’adoube

Like in any other sport, there are foreign words in chess too. “J’adoube” means “i’m fixing the place of the piece” in this context. If you are not intending to make a move yet, you can say j’adoube and make your pieces sit in the center of the square they are in. If you ask “do I have to say it?”. Yesi you have to. Otherwise how can your opponent know that you are not making a move?

Promotion

We’ve mentioned this in before articles. Here is how it works: Pawn is making a huge part of the fundamental moves in the game. But what if it goes to the last square that it can, then what happens? When a white pawn reaches to 8th row or a black pawn reaches to 1st row, It gets promoted. Theoretically you can promote your pawn to any piece you want but, when it comes to real life it’s almost always wiser to turn it in to a queen. Here is a video that demonstrates the importance of pawns:

!!! If there is no queen taken on the board that you can use as your promotion, you can use an upside down rook or 2 pawns in one square !!!

En Passant (Taking as It passes)

Another term that chess players use pretty frequently is “en passant”. Here in this contex “taking as it passes”. For example, if you have a pawn in C-2 square and you want to move it to C-4 by 2 squares. In this case if your opponent has a pawn in D-4, he can capture your pawn in C-3 and say en passant, even though you didn’t move your pawn to C-3.

Castle

Opposite of en passant, this one appears in almost every game. Every game either one player castles or gets a chance to castle. But, like in en passant castle has it’s own set of requirements to happen.

Before coming to special situations, basicly castle is the move where rook and king moves at the same time. This is the only move in chess that two pieces move at the same time. In the move king moves 2 squares towards the rook and rooks jumps over the king and lands on the other side of the king.

Requirements

In order Castle to happen, these conditions must be formed:

• Squares between rook and king must be empty.
• Either piece must be in their starting position.
• Either piece must be unmoved.
• As a result of castle, king can not be in danger.
• While being checked, defender can’t use castle to save the king.
• Squares that king will pass or end up can not be in danger.

!!! Castle is the newest move in chess. It’s only been used frequently for 150 years. Before that, castle was made by moving the rook first, and after that jumping the king above rook with two moves or exchanging the positions of the rook and the king !!!

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