Learn to Play Chess: the Rook and Bishop

If you want to learn to play chess, you should know how to use the rook and the bishop.

The Rook

This is also called as the “castle” in some countries because it basically looks like a castle tower. This piece moves the way it captures, unlike the very humble pawn. It moves horizontally and vertically and it can travel from one end of the board to another, thus it does not depend how many squares it crosses so long as there are no obstacles blocking it. If there is a piece blocking its way to a capture, the rook, unlike the knight, cannot jump over the piece. A rule of thumb that can help you remember is that the rook’s movement and capture path is like a “T” shape except when it touches the edges of a board. There are two rooks per color.

The Bishop

There are two bishops per color (four in the entire game). One bishop is for the dark squares and one bishop is for the light squares. If the rook moves in a horizontal/ vertical way, the bishop moves and captures in a diagonal way. It can also move from one end to the other end of the board so long as no piece is blocking it because it cannot jump over pieces.

Because bishops only move diagonally, if the bishop started out as a dark square bishop, it only sticks to that color; no way it can cross over to the light squares.