Play Master Chess

Chess is a game even older and tougher than your grandad! Take it turn by turn to move pawns, knights, rooks and royals, to take control of the board. In this version, you can play with a friend or against the computer.

The rules of chess can be a little tricky to get to grips with, but with a game like this, you can become a master chess player in no time! Chess has been around since ancient times, and any game that old has got some complexities to it. Luckily, this game lets you do advanced moves like Castling (swapping your king and rook) and En Passant (advancing pawns past enemies), with no bother. The rules mostly haven’t changed since the 1800s, when Queen Victoria was on the throne!

There are 64 squares on this 8 x 8 board, with each player commanding 16 pieces. The white pieces always move first. Tap on a piece to select, and see which spaces are highlighted – a glowing space means you can move a piece there. Pieces like pawns, your front line, have very simple movement, and can only go one or two squares forward at a time. Bishops can only move in diagonals, castles (called rooks) can only move in straight lines. The horse pieces, or Knights, move in a special L-shaped pattern. And last but not least, the Queen can move in all directions for up to 8 squares, while the King can move in any direction for only 1 square.

Got all that? Course you don’t! Start the game up and learn by playing! Challenge yourself by keeping an eye on the scores and time limits, and see if you can become a grand master – as if outsmarting the computer wasn’t hard enough to begin with, can you improve on your score?

Instructions: ♔ ♕ ♖ ♗ ♘ ♙

– Tap pieces to select them 
– Choose a highlighted square to move to 

– Capture enemy pieces without losing yours 
– Protect your king from being caught, or ‘checked’ 

– Get pawns to the opposite side to ‘upgrade’ them into
– Capture the enemy King in checkmate to win