Chess guides
The rules, the tricks and the mates worth knowing
Chess is a small set of rules and a large set of patterns. These guides cover both: how every piece moves, what they are worth, the tactics that win most games, and the checkmates that end them.
How Do Chess Pieces Move? Every Piece, Explained
What every chess piece does, in order of how often it catches people out: the knight, the pawn and its two odd rules, the bishop, rook, queen and king.
How to Play Chess: the Rules in Plain English
Setting up the board, who moves first, check, checkmate and stalemate, and the three special moves that trip beginners up: castling, en passant and promotion.
Chess Piece Values: What Each Piece Is Worth
Pawn 1, knight and bishop 3, rook 5, queen 9. Where the numbers come from, when they lie, and how to use them to decide a trade in a second.
Chess Tactics for Beginners: Forks, Pins and Skewers
The three tactics that win most beginner games, what each one looks like on the board, the pieces that are best at them, and how to spot them coming.
Checkmate Patterns Every Beginner Should Know
Back rank, smothered mate, the two rook ladder, Scholar’s mate and the king and queen finish: the shapes that end most games, and how to avoid them.
Chess Openings for Beginners: Five That Are Hard to Get Wrong
Three rules that beat memorising lines, then five openings worth knowing by name: the Italian, the London, the Scandinavian, the Caro-Kann and the Queen’s Gambit.
Chess Notation Explained: How to Read and Write Moves
Nf3, exd5, O-O, Qxh7#. What each letter and symbol means, how to read a whole game, and why writing moves down makes you better at playing them.
How to Get Better at Chess: What Actually Moves Your Rating
Stop hanging pieces, do puzzles daily, play opponents near your level, and look at your losses. What chess ratings mean, and how long improvement really takes.
How these guides are written
The 8 guides are written and edited in house, by the same person who builds Tiny Chess Master, which means every rule here is one the app had to implement exactly: the rules engine is checked move by move against the standard test positions, so if a guide and the app disagreed, one of them would be failing a test.
- Rules come from the Laws of Chess, not from memory. Where a rule has a famous edge case, like castling through check or en passant expiring after one move, the guide says so plainly.
- The advice is pitched at the level it is meant for. Opening theory is mostly left out, because it is not what decides games below about 1400, and saying so is more useful than filling a page.
- Every guide starts with a direct answer in the first few lines, because most people arrive from a search with one question.
- Sources are linked at the bottom of each guide, and guides carry a date.
Something wrong in a guide? hello@tiny-builder.app. We will fix it and say what changed. More about the studio is on the about page.