Chess basics, for people who came for the cards

Plenty of people arrive at StupidChess for the cards and have never sat down to a chess game. That's fine. The cards are the fun part, but they sit on top of an ordinary chess game, and a player who can't see a knight fork coming will lose to one whether or not a card is involved. This is the chess you need, piece by piece and rule by rule, with a note wherever this game departs from the standard one.

The board

The board is eight squares by eight. The files run a to h from left to right as White sees it, the ranks 1 to 8 from White's side to Black's. A square is named by its file and rank: e4, h7. The game writes moves this way, and so do the cards; A New King talks about f5, and the Bear Traps are named for a file or a rank.

You have sixteen pieces. The eight pawns stand on your second rank. Behind them, from the corners inward, a rook, a knight, a bishop, and then the queen and king on the two middle squares. The queen starts on her own color: d1 for White, d8 for Black.

One departure from standard chess belongs here. Break Ground and Breakout open the rank or file just outside one edge, and those squares stay playable for the rest of the game. Pieces move onto them by their normal rules, and the last rank moves out with the edge.

The pieces

Each piece has a way of moving, a way of capturing (the same, for all but the pawn), a rough value in pawns, and a note on what the cards do to it. The values are rough, but counting with them before a trade is the right habit: a rook for a bishop is fine, a queen for a knight is a disaster, unless a card is about to bring the queen back.

The king

Moves and captures one square in any direction. It has no value in points because losing it ends the game. In this game a king is never captured by a move: the game refuses the capture, so even a player with extra moves in hand has to deliver checkmate rather than take the king. That's what makes the last stand, below, possible.

The cards get at the king in a few ways. The king-designation cards (A New King on f5, Surprise Coronation on c6, Puppet King on d3, Royal Decoy on e6) make whatever piece of yours stands there your king for a turn, and both the stand-in and the real king then have to stay safe. The Royal cards, Royal Knight through Royal Queen, lend your king another piece's movement for a turn. A Landmine or Claymore is the one thing that takes a king: step on one and you lose the game, while a Spike Pit lets a king step over unharmed. Iron Wall protects every piece except the king, on purpose, so checkmate still works. A Shield or Aegis on the king keeps it out of check, within a limit covered below.

The queen

Moves and captures any distance along a rank, a file or a diagonal, as long as nothing stands in the way. Worth about nine. She's the piece new players throw away most.

In this game she's also the piece Execution kills outright, and no ordinary resurrection card brings a killed piece back. Plate Armor is the counter worth knowing: an armored piece can't be captured until the armor is broken, and Armor Piercing is what breaks it.

The rook

Moves and captures any distance along a rank or file. Worth about five. A rook on an open file, or on the seventh rank behind your opponent's pawns, wins more beginner games than any opening trick.

Execution kills rooks too, and Demote turns a rook (or a knight or bishop) into a pawn where it stands. A rook that has never left its home square is also what castling on that side needs.

The bishop

Moves and captures any distance along a diagonal, so it stays on one color of square all game. Worth about three.

Assassinate kills a pawn, knight or bishop for two Braincells, which is cheap, so a bishop doing something important is a target. Consolidate piles two of your knights, bishops or rooks of the same type onto each other, and you then need two turns to get both back into play.

The knight

Moves and captures in an L: two squares along a rank or file, then one square sideways. It jumps, so nothing between it and its landing square matters. Worth about three. The knight fork, one knight attacking two pieces at once, decides more beginner games than any other tactic, because it comes from a direction nobody was looking.

A Wall blocks a square and stops sliding pieces passing through it; a knight only cares whether its landing square is walled. Knight Like hands the jump to any other piece for a turn, and Assassinate, Demote and Consolidate all reach knights.

The pawn

Moves one square straight forward, or two on its first move, and never backward. It captures differently from how it moves: one square diagonally forward, never straight ahead, so a pawn with a piece in front of it can't advance. Worth one, but a pawn that reaches the far rank promotes, and that is the whole point of the endgame.

Pawns are where the cards bend the movement rules most. Tripping gives your pawns one extra square forward for a turn, so an unmoved pawn can step three. Sideways Pawns lets them step one square sideways and Backpedal one square straight back, neither capturing, and only for the turn. Pawn Armor makes a pawn uncapturable until a Weapon breaks the armor. And Scorched Earth sweeps every piece off the board except kings and pawns, which turns a game of pieces into a game of pawns in one play.

Check, checkmate, stalemate and the last stand

Check

When an enemy piece attacks the square your king stands on, you're in check, and you have to deal with it this turn: move the king, block the line, or capture the attacker. You can never make a move that leaves your own king in check, which is why a piece standing between your king and an enemy slider often can't move at all.

Two house rules. A shielded king isn't in check, since the attacker can't take it, but only while the shield will still be up for your opponent's reply: on the shield's last turn you have to get out of check the normal way. And while a king-designation card is in force, you're in check if either the stand-in or the real king is attacked.

Checkmate

Checkmate is check with no legal move that gets out of it. In standard chess that ends the game on the spot. Here it's judged as the mated side's turn begins, after the previous turn's expiries are swept, so a shield that lapses at the turn boundary, or a card played after the mating move, can make or break the mate. Then comes the last stand.

Stalemate

A side that isn't in check but has no legal move at all is stalemated, and the game is a draw. It comes up more here than in ordinary chess, because Freeze and its cousins take moves away. Two house rules again. A stalemate only stands once the mover has no move left this turn: with an extra move from Move Again or Double Time, you can still change the position. And a stalemated side gets a last stand too, on the same terms as a mated one.

The last stand

If you're checkmated or stalemated on the board but still hold a card that could change it, you get your turn anyway. That's the last stand. A card counts if it's playable: one in your hand you can pay for, or the card about to be dealt to you as the turn starts, since your pile may hold the answer. A Braincell doesn't count, because banking one can't move a piece. If a card gets your king out of mate, the stand is over and your turn carries on as normal, board move owed and all. If you end the turn still mated, you've accepted the checkmate; still stalemated, you've accepted the draw.

A position built to make the point: your king on g1, a black queen on g2 defended by a bishop, your rook on a1 and nothing else of yours nearby. On the board that's mate. In your hand, Vertical Teleport with the Braincells to pay for it. Teleport the rook to a2, where it attacks g2 along the rank, and the queen can be captured, so the mate is gone, the stand ends, and you take the queen as your move. Holding one useful card back is what makes this possible.

One rule sits beside all of this: every turn needs a board move before it can end, so the game refuses a card that would leave you with no legal move while you still owe one. Royal Pawn played while in check, or a wall that shuts in your last mobile piece, is rolled back rather than allowed to strand the turn. A card that ends the game, or settles a last stand, is never refused on these grounds.

The three special moves

Castling

Castling moves your king two squares toward a rook and puts the rook on the square the king crossed: for White, king e1 to g1 and rook h1 to f1 on the kingside, or king e1 to c1 and rook a1 to d1 on the queenside, and the same on the eighth rank for Black. The standard conditions apply: neither the king nor that rook has ever left home, every square between them is empty, and the king isn't in check, doesn't cross an attacked square, and doesn't land in check.

The house rules on top: the king has to be moving as a king, so a Royal card turns castling off for that turn; neither piece may be frozen; and a wall between them blocks it like a piece would. The right is lost for good once the king or that rook leaves home, by a move, by a capture landing on the square, or by a card that lifts the piece away. Castling is the quickest way to tuck your king behind pawns; do it in the first ten moves.

En passant

If an enemy pawn advances two squares and ends up beside one of yours, you may capture it as if it had moved only one, landing on the square it stepped over. The window is your single reply turn, and it closes even if you spend that turn entirely on cards. Here a pawn pushed three squares by Tripping leaves every square it skipped as a target, and a piece moving as a pawn under Pawn Like can both take en passant and be taken.

Promotion

A pawn that reaches the far rank must become another piece: a queen, rook, bishop or knight, your choice, and a queen almost every time. If no choice is made, you get a queen. A piece moving as a pawn under Pawn Like promotes too; a king under Royal Pawn never does, since that would leave your side without a king. When Break Ground has opened the ground past the edge, the last rank is the new one.

Three habits that win beginner games

Develop before you attack. In the first moves, push a center pawn or two, bring the knights and bishops off the back rank, and castle. Pieces on their starting squares do nothing. A queen that charges out alone on move three gets chased around and loses time, and here she's also a target for Execution.

Look at every capture, theirs and yours. Before you move, ask what your opponent can take if you do, and what you can take if they don't notice. Most beginner games are decided by a piece left where a knight could reach it. The cards add captures to look for: a bishop that can suddenly move like a queen, a rook that was two squares away and is adjacent after a board shift.

Keep your king covered. A castled king behind three pawns is safe from most things in chess. Here it is also the piece Swap Theirs can drag into the open, or that a rotation can set down on the wrong side of the board. Keep a defender near it, and when a card threatens it, move the king first. Keeping your king safe goes through the threats one by one.

Captured and killed

Captures work as they always have, with one addition. A piece killed by Assassinate, Execution or Death's Reach, or destroyed by a trap, is gone in a way a captured piece isn't: an ordinary resurrection can't bring it back, only Revival or Necromancy can.

The quickest way through all this is the tutorial, ten lessons on a real board with no account needed, then a few games against StupidFish. Your first game against a robot covers what to expect. You won't need an opening repertoire. Everything past this page, the cards will teach you by taking your pieces.