This week the new thing I tried was… chess!!!

I went to go visit my grandpa (who I call Pepé) and my grandma the past weekend. This was really fun and good to get to talk to them. A big highlight of this visit was having Pepé teach me how to play chess and we played a few rounds.

My dad tried to teach me how to play chess when I was a bit younger, but it never really stuck and I never completely learned. Also, I could never concentrate enough to finish the game.

So he started by telling me what all the different pieces did/how they moved around the board. This was a lot to remember right of the bat. After that, we tried actually playing a game. We spent about an hour in the one game, but the time just flew by. Obviously, I lost, but I learned a lot in just one game. Practice makes perfect!- or at least decent. He got a lot of my pieces and ended up surrounding me in a way that I couldn’t get out of check.

Once that first game was over, we took a break and just relaxed for a bit. After an hour or two we pulled back out the board. I was ready for round two and announced that I would win. I didn’t say that game- I wish – I lost again, but one day I will win!

Loosing is on the road to success.

Still, I did improve a bit in the second game, I even got him in check at one point. Also, I learned that if one of my pawns got to his side, I could replace it with one of the pieces he had taken from me. That was a really nice surprise, but I didn’t think about what I was doing due to my excitement and lost the piece within the next turn.

Overall it was a fun game to learn and I plan to get my own chess board to play on with some friends. I will win one day!

The chess pieces:

Pawn- they can move only directly forward by one square except for two cases, one case is that a pawn can move directly forward two or one squares on the first turn, the other case is when a pawn is capturing an opponents chess piece it moves diagonally. One other time that a pawn does something different is once a pawn reaches the other side of the board the player can trade it for another chess piece. There are 8 pawns per side.

Rook- This piece moves forward, backward, left or right. They can move as far in any of those directions on the board as long as another piece is in its way. There are two rooks per side.

Knight- This is the piece that looks like a horse. It can move forward, backward, left or right two squares and then must move one square in either perpendicular direction. This is practically in the shape of an “L”. The night can also skip over any other piece to get to its finishing point, as long as the other piece is not on the knights ending point.

Bishop- This piece can move in any direction diagonally as long as it is not going over another piece.

Queen- This is considered the most important and powerful piece on the board. It can move any direction on a straight or a diagonal path. I cannot skip over another piece.

King- This piece and do very little, but is most important because whoever gets the other persons king is the winner. It can move a single square in any of the directions, but not if another piece is there. Also, there can be castling which is when the piece can move up to 3 squares and exchange places with a rook chess piece. When the king is in check the only thing a player can do is get the piece out of check.

The winner is the one who gets the other person king by putting them in checkmate.

Learning and playing chess was a fun experience although it was a lot of thinking.

Have any of you guys played chess before, and if so how did you learn?

Till next time…