Article 1: The Nature and Objectives of the Game of Chess

1.1     The game of chess is played between two opponents who move their pieces on a square board called a ‘chessboard’.

1.2     The player with the light-coloured pieces (White) makes the first move, then the players move alternately, with the player with the dark-coloured pieces (Black) making the next move.

1.3     A player is said to ‘have the move’ when his/her opponent’s move has been ‘made’.

1.4     The objective of each player is to place the opponent’s king ‘under attack’ in such a way that the opponent has no legal move.

1.4.1    The player who achieves this goal is said to have ‘checkmated’ the opponent’s king and to have won the game. Leaving one’s own king under attack, exposing one’s own king to attack and also ’capturing’ the opponent’s king is not allowed.

1.4.2    The opponent whose king has been checkmated has lost the game.

1.5     If the position is such that neither player can possibly checkmate the opponent’s king, the game is drawn (see Article 5.2.2).