Excalibur Electronics reserves the right to
make technical changes without notice in the
interest of progress.
attacker.
End of game: If a player’s king is in
check and can’t escape or block the
check, the king is checkmated and the
game ends in favor of the opponent,
regardless of the number of men remain-
ing on each side. At any time, a player can
voluntarily resign—his opponent wins. A
game is a draw (tie) when the players no
longer have material required for check-
mating, or one side is unable to escape a
series of checks (not checkmate), or when
one side is in stalemate—stalemate exists
when one side has no legal moves but is
not in check. A game can also be drawn
by mutual agreement between the players.
Some Tips on Chess
1. Move only one or two center pawns in
the opening. Then develop your knights
and bishops so that they control the cen-
ter.
2. Chessmen that aren’t pawns are called
“pieces.” Get your pieces (off the back-
rank and into the game before beginning
an attack!
2. Castle your king into safety and rook
into play as soon as possible.
3. View each of your opponent’s moves as
a potential threat—look carefully to see if
his move attacks one of your men.
4. Exchange less valuable men for more
valuable men. The chessmen who can be
captured are valued as follows: pawn (1),
knight and bishop (3), rook (5), queen
(9).
10
move, and if the king is not in check.
Capturing en passant:This is a special
pawn capture that doesn’t happen often
but comes in handy to know! This move
has a good purpose—to keep the game
from being
bl o c ked by
i n t e r l o c k i n g
p a w n s .
Capturing e n
passant (French
for “in passing”)
is possible only
when one side’s
p awn has
advanced to the
fifth rank, and a
neighboring enemy pawn then advances
two squares at once from its original
square. Then on the very next move, the
player whose pawn is on the fifth rank
can capture the opposing pawn as if it had
advanced only one square. If the player
does not capture in this way on his very
next move, he loses the option.
Promotion:A Pawn can be promoted if it
advances all the way to the far side of the
board. It is immediately promoted, as part
of the same move, into a queen, rook,
bishop, or knight, whichever its owner
chooses. Since a queen is the most pow-
erful piece, it is nearly always chosen as
the promotion piece. Through the promo-
tion process, there may be more than one
queen on the board at the same time.
Check: If the king is attacked (in check),
the player is then obliged to protect his
king either by moving it to anoth er
square, moving one of his own pieces
between the king and the threatening
piece (blocking), or by capturing the
wdwdwdwd
dwdpdwdwwd*dwdwddw0Pdwdw
wdwdwdwd
dwdwdwdw
wdwdwdwd
dwdwdwdw
En passant: Black just moved
his pawn two squares; White
can capture on the square
marked with a *.