Chess is a game that has achieved a great deal of fame for being the chosen activities of geniuses and deep thinkers, and it is also a game that you can play in your own home!

It is a game where the basics can be learned inside of an hour, but mastering the intricacies and the strategies that go into playing a good game can take more than a life time.

Played on a grid of sixty four black and white squares, the intent of the game is to move the pieces across the board with the ultimate goal being to capture your opponent's king.

There have been thousands of books written about the game, the strategies that it takes to win the game and the mindset that goes into it, and over the centuries, the game of chess has changed as much as the people playing it!

It is generally believed that chess draws it beginnings from India, during the Gupta empire.

During this time periods, there was a game known as caturanaga, which can be roughly translated into “four divisions,” these four divisions referring to the four parts of an army.

The different segments of infantry, calvary, elephants and charioteers can still be seen today in the modern pieces of the pawns, the knights, the bishops and the rooks, but the game would look quite different from what we are used to.

The game entered the Muslim world with the Islamic conquest of Persia, and in this way, the game spread through Africa and Europe.

To North Africans, the game was known as shatranj, in Portuguese, it was xadrez, and sacchi in Italian.

In France, it acquired the name echecs, which originally translated it into the sport of kings.

Chess was considered a refined past time and in the elaborately decorated and expensive chessboards that survive, it was certainly a game of the rich.

Even at this early date, chess was considered a thinkers game, and as early as the middle ages, it was known as one of the seven skills that a knight should be educated in.

There are many pictures and paintings of kings and queens enjoying this game. In fact, there was even a religious outcry against it as being a pasttime that was indulgent and induced the player to laziness and worldliness.

The question of how to play chess is one that people have been trying to explore for hundreds of years, but this should in no way stop you from giving it a go. 

The first thing that you need to figure out if you are starting with no experience with the game is how each of the pieces move and how they capture other pieces. 

For instance, pawns can move forward one space at a time.  They can only move in a straight line, unless they are going to capture a piece, in which case, they will move diagonally to capture.  If they have not yet moved and there is nothing in the way, they can move forward two spaces.

The pawns have the most complex series of moves, and after that, it is quite simple. 

The king can move one square at a time, though I can move in any direction, while a queen can move vertically, horizontally or diagonally as far as you wish it to.  

Rook can move horizontally and vertically to any unoccupied square, while a bishop can move only diagonally. 

A knight essentially moves in a “seven,” where it moves horizontally or vertically two spaces and then moves into a space that is at a right angle from the direction that it was traveling.

Play often
You are not going to get very far unless you play the game regularly. There are lots of opportunities, whether you are interested in going to a chess club or just playing online. A great place to go if you want to play against other people online is Pogo Chess. It's really great and it's free too.

Read

There are lots of great books and articles out there, so find some that speak to the level of chess that you are playing at. A great book to use to get a head start on everyone else is the Chess Success Secrets

Sit on your hands
Many chess games are run on the touch rule, where if you touch a piece you have to move it. If you play in games like this, sit on your hands until you know where you want to move to.