How Can You Capture Your Opponent's Piece When Playing Chess?

In chess, each kind of piece moves differently and some have special capturing rules.

To play chess properly, you must learn the basic moves that pieces may make and the way each one can make a capture. It's a very straightforward process for the rook, the queen, and bishop, but other pieces such as the knights and pawns capture in an odd manner that does not apply to conventional movement across the board. Captured pieces are removed from the board and can't return.

Instructions

1. Move your bishop diagonally at all times. It may capture any piece in its path except the king. No piece captures a king; any piece that has an unblocked path to the king would already have it in check.

2. Move your rook vertically and horizontally to capture any pieces that might be in its path. Move your queen vertically, horizontally or diagonally to do the same.

3. Move pawns one square diagonally to capture. Otherwise, pawns can only move forward. Kings rarely capture other pieces, but it can if that piece is one square away in any direction.

4. Move knights in one of two ways: one square in any vertical or horizontal direction followed by two squares in a perpendicular direction or vice versa. Any opponent piece that sits in the final square your knight lands on gets captured.

Tips & Warnings

• Another rule applies to capturing called "en passant." Under this rule, if a pawn moves two squares (which it can only do from its starting position) and ends up side-by-side with your pawn, you may capture it by moving diagonally to the space the pawn would have been in had it moved just one square. Players have to agree to this rule before a game.

References

• Chess Variants: Rules of Chess