I recently saw a blog post about ChessTweets, a chess community for Twitter. ChessTweets is going beyond making an app for playing chess by Twitter, they’re conducting an experiment in the value of a collective mind.
In a comment to a recent post, Scott asks why someone doesn’t mention that you can’t make the en passant capture if the King is in check. The short answer is that you can make the en passant capture if it removes the check.
(Here are two videos to help illustrate the en passant rule.)
When you are reading a chess book, you will often find exclamation points or question marks (or some combination of exclamation points and question marks) after certain moves. These are generally accepted indications of good moves and bad moves. Here’s the normal meaning for these symbols:
One of the first things a new chess player must learn is how to finish off the checkmate when you have won the game. Often this boils down to one of the basic checkmates: King and Queen v. King, or King and Rook v. Rook. I previously gave some rules about how to checkmate with King and Queen against King, and you might want to review that if you’re unsure how to finish that mate.