How To Play: Touch Moves | ChessKid

One of the biggest differences between internet chess and over-the-board chess is the idea of touch-move. This is a rule that's used in almost every chess tournament. It's also a rule that's created quite a lot of arguments when people play chess in the park. But I'm here to tell you, no matter what chess tournament you play in that's over-the-board, it's pretty much always going to be touch-move. So what is touch-move? Well, touch-move simply means when you touch a piece, you have to move it. Now that sounds simple enough, but there's still a couple of different things that we should talk about so that you fully understand the rule. First of all, if you touch a piece that can't move, of course, we can't make you move it. If for some reason in this chess position, black touches the rook on a8, well, there's no legal move with the rook, so obviously black does not have to move it. Now, what about if black touches this knight and is about to put the knight on the square d7 and then sees, oh my goodness, there's this crazy tactic where white can sacrifice on f7 and then bring the knight to the square g5? And we're not going to get into why that's good for white. You're going to have to take my word for it. But what could black do? Well, as long as black does not release his or her hold on the knight, my advice is to put the knight right back where you came from, and you are allowed to decide upon a new square, but you still must move the knight. The point is, by not releasing the piece, you do not have to put the piece on a square. If you touch a square with a piece, as long as you hold on to that piece, you can still move it somewhere else. And in fact, black could probably play knight c6 and get a reasonable game. Now, what about if you touch one of your opponent's pieces? Well, in that case, you have to capture it. Again, as long as there's a legal way. If you were to touch white's queen, well, you can't legally capture the queen, although that'd be a nice trick if for some reason you would just touch her and remove her from the board. But that's not how chess works. In this position, if you touch the white pawn on e4, you would have to capture it because there is a legal way to capture it. Even if you don't want to, you would have to. By the way, it's actually not a bad move. It's called the center fork trick. But again, we're not talking about chess tactics. We're talking about rules. Now, what about if you pick up your knight and you touch the white pawn with your knight? Well, interestingly, that counts as touching the pawn. The minute you grab the knight, the knight is considered an extension of your hand. So, by touching the enemy pawn with your knight, you are required to capture it. What about castling? Well, when you castle, it is proper to touch the king first. This is actually a situation where international rules and United States rules differ a little bit. In the United States, you actually could grab your rook first to castle. But you know what? On ChessKid, if you move the rook to f8 and let go, it's not going to put the king on g8. So, it is my advice 100% to tell you to touch the king first. That way, you don't have to worry about where you are in the If you're playing over the board or online, it is always more proper to touch the king first when castling and then grabbing the rook second. Lastly, there are exceptions to touch move, mostly when you do not intend to touch any piece. For example, if you are playing over the board and you are black here and you, I don't know, reached over and you grazed a piece with your elbow, well, if it's clearly an accident, since we don't actually move pieces with our elbow, you do not have to actually move that piece. It is proper when you are fixing a piece because it has accidentally been knocked over or if it's touching two squares to say the word adjust or the French term j'adobe. But you must say it before you touch the piece. That tells your opponent that you're simply trying to fix the piece. You're not intending to move the piece. So, make sure you say adjust or j'adobe before you touch the piece. Again, in the online world, we don't do touch move and the computer always puts that piece right in the middle of the square. But when you start transitioning to over the board play and especially tournaments, you're going to want to get used to the touch move rule.