https://www.opendoorchess.com/joyful-chess-blog daily 0.75 2026-10-09 https://www.opendoorchess.com/joyful-chess-blog/the-20-dollar-hobby-that-keeps-on-giving monthly 0.5 2026-01-06 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67b2f6f9f88263340b4d9726/db868f8c-af9c-46e2-a605-7caa9a0ed3ed/chess Joyful Chess Blog - The 20-Dollar Hobby that Keeps on Giving - Make it stand out Photo by Marina Zvada on Unsplash https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67b2f6f9f88263340b4d9726/5c22db8c-ff9e-417e-b59a-d1f8a86e89f1/vitaly-gariev-bVyky0DCJEI-unsplash.jpg Joyful Chess Blog - The 20-Dollar Hobby that Keeps on Giving - Make it stand out Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash https://www.opendoorchess.com/joyful-chess-blog/the-road-to-mastery monthly 0.5 2026-09-08 https://www.opendoorchess.com/joyful-chess-blog/how-to-move-chess-pieces monthly 0.5 2026-10-09 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67b2f6f9f88263340b4d9726/1791539430925-EP730J26ROD56ZBUR2ZJ/unsplash-image-fzM9jFtf5g4.jpg Joyful Chess Blog - How to Move Chess Pieces - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67b2f6f9f88263340b4d9726/12458264-293e-4355-8f7a-5b2494a8fa81/chess+piece+names.png Joyful Chess Blog - How to Move Chess Pieces - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67b2f6f9f88263340b4d9726/d041661f-1001-4879-9fcf-6513e7ca146b/Rook+%282%29.png Joyful Chess Blog - How to Move Chess Pieces - The Rook How It Moves Rooks are long-range logical pieces that move forward, backward, left, and right, as far as you want. How It Captures It attacks in the same direction it moves. Any of your opponent’s pieces that are in line with your Rook can be captured. Can It Jump Over Pieces: No Common Mistake Many players own pawns block their Rooks from attacking their opponent. Avoid this by moving your Rooks so that they attack freely down the board. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67b2f6f9f88263340b4d9726/91e9aca0-5de4-4c0d-9a23-3d79d1480119/Bishop.png Joyful Chess Blog - How to Move Chess Pieces - The Bishop How It Moves Bishops are long-range snipers that attack on their diagonals. They can move forward, backward, left, and right along their slants. How It Captures Their range of attack is the same as their movement, so opponent pieces in line with them can be captured. Can It Jump Over Pieces: No Common Mistake Bishops pushed too far are easy to attack. Keep your distance early in the game so you aren’t an easy target. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67b2f6f9f88263340b4d9726/40456bf7-06a9-4314-974b-20bcc927bfff/Queen.png Joyful Chess Blog - How to Move Chess Pieces - The Queen How It Moves The Queen is a powerhouse long-range piece and moves like both a Bishop and Rook combined. It moves forward, backward, left, right, and along its diagonals. How It Captures It attacks in the same directions it can move. If your opponent’s pieces are in line with your Queen, they’re able to be captured. Can It Jump Over Pieces: No Common Mistake Beginner players often get their Queen out too early, which leads to it getting captured. It’s better to get all of your pieces out and have them work together. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67b2f6f9f88263340b4d9726/ba2b7a07-9b75-4ff8-9ed2-f2b53afa819f/King.png Joyful Chess Blog - How to Move Chess Pieces - The King How It Moves Your King is a short-range piece that’s able to move one square in any direction, so long as not blocked by its own color pieces. How It Captures It attacks one square in any direction. Can It Jump Over Pieces: No Limitations Kings are not able to step into any squares that enemy pieces attack. Because of this, Kings can never be next to each other because each King’s movement and attack range is 1 square surrounding them. Common Mistake Kings are never captured and taken off of the board. Checkmate ends the game immediately. Checkmate is a position where an opponent piece has moved to a square that threatens the King (called “Check”), but the King is not able to run to safety, block the attack, or capture the attacker. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67b2f6f9f88263340b4d9726/73055371-dab0-4f75-81b7-c8461a7a5fa2/Knight.png Joyful Chess Blog - How to Move Chess Pieces - The Knight How It Moves Knights are unique mid-range pieces that move “over two, over one”. Starting from a vertical or horizontal square around the Knight, count two squares up, down, left, or right. Then adjacent one square. (In the image, the Knight lands on the white circles.) How It Captures Knights capture only on the square they land on, not the pieces they jump over. Can It Jump Over Pieces YES! The Knight can jump over your pieces and your opponent pieces. It can’t land on squares your pieces occupy, though. It would be blocked. Common Mistake Beginner players struggle to see how their opponent’s Knights threaten their army. Get used to Knights by placing a Knight on an empty board and making moves until it becomes easy to see. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67b2f6f9f88263340b4d9726/40b51e91-194f-43c1-898f-d8ed49fba6d8/Pawn.png Joyful Chess Blog - How to Move Chess Pieces - The Pawn How Pawns Moves Pawns are short-range pieces that each have the option to move one square or two squares on their first move. After a pawn’s first move, it can only move forward one square at a time. How Pawns Capture Each pawn attacks one square forward diagonally in either direction. If your opponent’s pieces are on these squares, they can be captured, no matter how powerful they are. That means a lowly pawn is able to capture a powerful Queen. Can they Jump Over Pieces: No Common Mistake Pawns can’t capture pieces in front of them- that’s something beginner players often get wrong. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67b2f6f9f88263340b4d9726/1791240056592-1HWFV1JV4WMNRM3YCFX0/unsplash-image-6gASztttN-Q.jpg Joyful Chess Blog - How to Move Chess Pieces - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67b2f6f9f88263340b4d9726/a83726e2-3aa0-4bc7-b8f4-84c19994c1c0/manu-tb3Cc7jk42Y-unsplash.jpg Joyful Chess Blog - How to Move Chess Pieces - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://www.opendoorchess.com/joyful-chess-blog/startyourchessjourney monthly 0.5 2026-09-09 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67b2f6f9f88263340b4d9726/e7854058-dc39-4ddd-a778-f9b87b90bcd9/daniil-zameshaev-mKMemvbqFmM-unsplash.jpg Joyful Chess Blog - Start (or continue) Your Chess Journey https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67b2f6f9f88263340b4d9726/adbb862a-ef63-4985-ba82-8e81d291dca4/luke-liscom-My0OBH-NVgQ-unsplash+%281%29.jpg Joyful Chess Blog - Start (or continue) Your Chess Journey - Chess is a two-player strategy game played on an 8-square by 8-square board, where each player controls 16 pieces with the goal of checkmating their opponent's King. Checkmate is a position where a King is threatened by an opponent piece (called “check”), but can’t escape the threat. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67b2f6f9f88263340b4d9726/e5e409a1-674c-4b26-bf6e-562bf5ab5218/roquelle-iRL1P94z4Xc-unsplash.jpg Joyful Chess Blog - Start (or continue) Your Chess Journey - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67b2f6f9f88263340b4d9726/319bb9eb-fb6b-4ea8-a5dc-b7b916f64e6e/bas-van-den-eijkhof-qcblfK7kjL4-unsplash.jpg Joyful Chess Blog - Start (or continue) Your Chess Journey https://www.opendoorchess.com/joyful-chess-blog/knowyourchessboard monthly 0.5 2026-09-09 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67b2f6f9f88263340b4d9726/4ea6766a-0655-45de-b36a-7252e9827d5e/jani-kaasinen-7VGzV09YnvA-unsplash.jpg Joyful Chess Blog - Learn the Parts of the Chess Board. - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67b2f6f9f88263340b4d9726/7e859cf6-3d34-4f8a-ae25-d78ad53cb63e/shri-CG-JvqWqutM-unsplash.jpg Joyful Chess Blog - Learn the Parts of the Chess Board. - Chess boards are made of 5 main parts. Let’s look at each in a bit more detail. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67b2f6f9f88263340b4d9726/3ab4b0c0-aa80-4803-8f85-032e7369e487/Files.png Joyful Chess Blog - Learn the Parts of the Chess Board. - Files Files are the vertical lines on the chess board. There are a total of 8 files and they are lettered “a” through “h” when looking at the board from white’s position. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67b2f6f9f88263340b4d9726/cbaf3577-6508-4695-a94b-7b1fb273b6e2/Ranks.png Joyful Chess Blog - Learn the Parts of the Chess Board. - Ranks Ranks are the horizontal lines on the chess board. There are eight total and are numbered 1 through 8 from white’s view. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67b2f6f9f88263340b4d9726/5dfde0ba-ef82-4492-bd17-458487bb36bc/Coordinate.png Joyful Chess Blog - Learn the Parts of the Chess Board. - Coordinate A coordinate is the combination of a file and a rank and is how we identify individual squares. The file letter always goes first and is written lowercase (this will help you later when you learn notation). This square is e4 because it’s in the “e” file on the fourth rank. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67b2f6f9f88263340b4d9726/3ce23632-be1e-466d-b8e9-0970b78d8fae/Diagonal.png Joyful Chess Blog - Learn the Parts of the Chess Board. - Diagonals Diagonals are the slants on the chess board. They can be as big as eight squares or as small as two. You’ll likely never be asked to name one, but they’re labeled using their starting and ending coordinate. For example, the larger diagonal in the picture is the a1 to h8 diagonal. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/67b2f6f9f88263340b4d9726/5df4cc3d-6e80-4635-a118-8f4e89df47e0/Center.png Joyful Chess Blog - Learn the Parts of the Chess Board. - The Center The center refers to the 4 squares in the middle of the board. Namely d4, d5, e4, and e5. 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