Stuff You Should Know - How Chess Works

Episode Date: November 5, 2013

Despite its knights, bishops and castles, the game of chess has been around a lot longer since the Medieval Age. And it wasn't even invented in Europe - chess comes from 2nd-century India, when some unknown inventor created what has come to be considered the perfect game. Learn all about the history of chess and how to play it in this engrossing episode of Stuff You Should Know. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Murray Head. With me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And it's Stuff You Should Know. Murray Head. He's the guy who did One Night in Bangkok. Oh, I know. I just don't get the reference.

Oh, it's about Bobby Fisher. It's from the musical Chess. What? We talked about this before. I have no idea what you're talking about. In an episode, Jerry, did we not? I'm almost positive we did. Jerry doesn't listen.

What? Yeah, I think I have a faint memory. One Night in Bangkok is from the musical Chess. Which I didn't know existed. Right. And it's based loosely on the story of Bobby Fisher. OK, I do remember that now. And I think I was just as surprised back then.

But it's the truth. I know. Tell me in another couple of years. And I'll be delighted all over again. What's with Murray Head? That can't be the guy's real name. And why would that be a name you adopted, although it's perfect for like 1984 or five?

I bet that's his name. Murray Head. I'm going to look into it. What parents' name their kid Murray Head? Well, his last name was Head, right? I'm saying, yeah, but no. Doctor and Mrs. Head? Maybe.

Doctor and Doctor Head? Maybe so. Maybe his parents are both doctors. But don't you think that probably then, if his last name really was Head, it was actually like Hedowski or something like that? Yeah, maybe. Murray Hedowski I can live with.

Murray Head? Yeah. It's terrible. That is weird. Chuck's checking his watch, which is the universal sign for me to hurry things along. No, I'm not. And I need to apologize to you because it's a busy week for me.

And I said, hey, let's do one that is not super tough. And I sent you chess. Yeah. And you were like today, you're like, I've never played chess before. Not in my life. Yeah, I had no idea. I apologize for some reason.

I don't even know how to play checkers. Yeah. And now that I think about it, I don't see you as a chess player. Until now. I don't know. Are you viewing more as a type of person who would walk in and like drop a bowling ball on the chess

board and say I win? You got me way wrong. You're not like super strategic and tactical. What? You use a big stick. Oh, I can be both ways. You're just talking about your own experience with me. Oh.

Yeah, I can play chess and I intend to. Are you going to play? Yeah. After researching this, I emailed you and I was like, we have to start playing chess. She said her dad taught her like the basic moves when she was a kid, but she never really got into it. So we're going to start playing chess.

Well, I never got into it, got into it. But I did learn when I was probably a young teenager. And my brother and I played for a little while. Who won? I think he always won. But I never, ever learned strategy. I was like, I learned how the pieces moved. And then as a dumb little 13-year-old kind of went about

my way trying to get the king and checkmate. Right. You sold your detective comics number one and stopped playing the piano and started drinking beer. By the way, I looked up Murray Head. I rarely do this. His name is Murray Seafield St. George Head. So his name really is Murray Head.

Why didn't he go by Murray St. George? Or Seafield St. George. That's awesome. Yeah, it is. It sounds like you should be wearing a cravat any time you say that. All right, so let's play some chess. OK, so you were just saying that you stopped playing chess

and you really never got strategy. No, but I remember I could sit down and play right now. OK, so poorly. I probably could, too, after reading this article 18 times. So sorry. But the thing that I gathered from this article is that had you kept playing, you would have eventually stopped thinking

about how you can move your pieces and started thinking strategically. That just kind of comes with time and practice. It's a natural result of playing chess. Yeah, probably so. And I think I remember probably getting a little better. But unless you know the bona fide strategies, there's a ceiling to how good you can get.

So we're going to get email about this. It's bona fide as like a descriptor. But if it is your bona fide, it's like a noun, like your credentials, then that's how it's pronounced. Oh, bona fide can be correct? Yeah, bona fide is right. But what you're talking about, like my bona fide is like, are that I'm great.

But I'm bona fide great. Gotcha. I think that's right. And I thought I was just mispronouncing as a joke, like I normally do. Let's talk chess. All right, chess, for me, one of my favorite things about the game is that it is, as pointed out in this article,

is the great equalizer. And sitting. Sitting in chess. It is very cool to me that the brainiest nerds in a classroom or a library might play. Or you can walk by Washington Square Park and see in these old codgers playing chess that have been battling it out for years.

Or the kid from Fresh. Did he play chess? Speed chess? Did he? I think so. It really just is, it spans ages and races and social and economic groups. It's really kind of cool.

It's not like just like some snooty game. Right, you know? Yeah, I mean, everybody can play it. And it's old. Yes, it is. The Indians can actually claim, or India can claim chess. The invention of chess. Yeah, those are Indians.

I know. If it wasn't for Christopher Columbus, we wouldn't have to make that distinction. That's the second appearance today. Yes, it does. Is rooted in India. Believed to have been born in about AD 300 by the name Kataranga. Yeah.

And it was a four person game. Kataranga was with 64 squares on the board. But the moves are similar to the modern game. And the chess we all know and love is most closely tied to that original Indian game. Yeah. And not some of these other ones. We actually don't know the rules of Kataranga.

It was lost to the ages. But there's a guy, but we do know that it did exist. We, I think we have our hands on Kataranga boards. And it's obviously the predecessor of chess. But there's a guy, right? This article called Big Game Hunter from 2008 in Time magazine. Yeah. It's about this guy named Irving Finkel.

Isn't that a great name? Irving Finkel? Yeah. And he works at the British Museum. And he's a game expert. And basically his job is to find old games and to figure out their rules. Man, that is cool.

Do you know how smart that guy has to be? So I don't know if he's worked on Kataranga or what. But I guarantee that's on his bucket list is to figure out exactly how Kataranga was played. Wow. That's pretty awesome. Well, is it a job or is it? It's a job.

Good for you, Irving Finkel. So Kataranga was originated about 300 AD in India. And a couple hundred years later, it made its way out to Persia. Yeah, it's Chutrang. Yeah. And the Persians were firmly planted onto the Silk Road. And the Silk Road spread everything.

It really did. And one of the things it did spread was Chutrang or Chutrang. And it made it into Arabia. And the Arabians also referred to as the Moors once they invaded Spain or the Moops, depending on whether you like Seinfeld or not. And from there, it spread all through Europe. Yes.

And then, of course, eventually the Americas and the rest of the continents, it spread like everything else spread, really. It did. So our modern chess that we play today is traced back to Chutrang and the diaspora of Chutrang. But of course, the Chinese and the Japanese were like, we'll just come up with our own.

But we'll base it on Chutrang. Yeah, it seems like most cultures had similar slight variations, including Germany and the Byzantines who played on a circular board. Germans had three extra pieces that we don't use. In China and Japan, like you mentioned, which they still play today, their own versions. In China, it's called Siangkai.

Nice. You sounded like the guy from NPR. And the board is a five by nine grid. And it's green and red. Two five by nine grids. Oh, it is. It's extensive. Yeah, they're two five by nine grids separated by a moat.

Well, that's the part that I love best. The moat? Oh, yeah. Wouldn't it be cool if you had a really great board that had water in it and a mini sea monster swimming around? That'd be awesome. And the goal there, instead of a king, you are supposed to topple the general.

Right. The general is the top dog. Not a big difference in that place. No. The Japanese have one called Shigo. Shogi. Shogi. I got it backwards.

And that's a nine by nine grid. 20 game pieces, which is four more than chess. Yeah. 20 game pieces for each player. The big difference is that they're all the same color. Yeah, you'd think that's confusing, but. Apparently they face in a certain direction, and that's how you tell what piece belongs to whom.

Yeah. But I guess if you know the game, it's not super confusing. So like I said, modern chess that we play now is basically closely resembles the original Indian game. I said that. Did you say that? And in the 15th and 16th centuries, though, is when the queen basically became

the most powerful piece on the board. Which is very surprising. Is it? Yes. The 15th and 16th centuries, the age of misogyny, that's when witches were created. The idea of the women being powerful was a bad thing, like the continuation of just women being held down.

At the same time, in chess, in this universally enjoyed game, the one obviously female piece was given the most power. Yeah, but that was also like some pretty powerful queens at that time, right? That's a good point. I don't know. So there were some difference, though, between the pieces, of course, in the Western game.

Like they had elephants in the Indian version, whereas we had knights. So just kind of character differences. And until the mid-19th century, there were class differences as well. So if you were a wealthy person, you had these big, heavy chess pieces that would like fud and stay in place.

If you were poor, you just had chunks of wood that represented the pieces. And then in the mid-19th century, Jean Jacques of Jacques of London created the design that we see in chess boards today. Yeah, which is a symbol denoting what piece it is on top of a pedestal. Yeah, and did you know the pawn?

It's basically like a ball on top of a vase or something like that. It's supposedly supposed to represent the compass and square of the mason. Oh, yeah? Interesting. Oh, and the pedesters of different heights, too. That's important to know.

Yes. Because I'll come into play. It will. What else? Well, these days, you can just play with each other. You can play on the computer. They have computers that play people. I know we all remember when Deep Blue 2 beat Gary Kasparov

in the 90s. That was a big deal. Like one of the few times chess makes front-page news these days. It's got to be a big deal. That was a huge deal because they'd been trying to build computers that could beat humans at chess for decades.

And they finally did it. And I mean, Kasparov was the undisputed champ. He was the best chess player walking the planet. Like everyone agreed. And he got beat by a computer. I bet he was pissed. I'll bet he was, too. Can't you imagine?

At the very least, you have a nightmare that night. All right, so if you've never played before, let's talk a little bit about the game itself. That's a two-person game, not the four-person game, like it was originally. Right. The end game, the goal is to attack the king, put the king in check, meaning it cannot move

without being captured, which would be a checkmate. Yes. If you can get out of check, you can keep playing. If there is no possible move the king can make, then you are in checkmate game over. Which is a really odd little quirk of chess. The king actually is never captured. Yeah.

It ends just before his capture or when his capture becomes inevitable. Yeah, and captured meaning like you don't take it off the board and rub it in, I guess. It's the one piece that can never leave the board. It's an illegal move. Yeah, and I've seen people knock over the king. I don't know if that's just a legit move

or if that's a jerk move, but I've seen it happen. Yeah. I have two movies. You have? Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. Fresh. They are, the board is half white.

The pieces are half white, half black. The board is half white and half black or light and dark. I'd like to quote the article. What does it say? If I may. The rules of the game are based on the pieces, half of which are black and half of which are white. True, game manufacturers who are in the business of fun

create games with nontraditional colors and replace typical game pieces with other characters. But for the purpose of this article, we will use the standard colors. Yeah, because we're talking about chess. I thought that was a great COA. Yeah, that's pretty funny. Game makers who are in the business of fun.

I've never seen those. I wonder what other characters. I'm sure like everybody who plays D&D or Star Trek or you know what I'm saying. Yeah, had their own version. Yeah, like the Star Wars chess. Made by game manufacturers and they're in the business of fun.

I do have a Star Wars monopoly, which is pretty fun. So the chess board itself has 64 squares that alternate in color, like we said, across eight different rows. So you've got horizontal rows called ranks, which are numbered one through eight. Yes. Then you've got the vertical rows called files. Rank and file.

Letter A through H. Yes, so any square has a number letter designation. That's right. And the four squares in the center are really the most important. Those are E4, E5, D4, and D5. Yeah, and they're the most important for controlling the game.

Correct me if I'm wrong. It doesn't actually explicitly say in the article. But that's because it's the easiest place to block and defend and attack from. So if you control the center, you can move easily throughout anywhere on the rest of the board. Is that why controlling the center is important? I think so.

And I think just in terms if you were to look at chess as like a military invasion, you don't want to be trapped in the corner or against a wall, you know what I'm saying? You're probably most dangerous like in the middle. That's just a guess. Yeah, especially if you've got four guys in the middle with all their backs together and their guns pointed outward. And then you'd just be like, you know?

This is exactly how I thought this would go. So each player has 16 starts with 16 game pieces. You have either all the black ones or all the white ones. And those consist of eight pawns, two rooks that look like little castles, two knights that look like little horses, two bishops, which I guess they're sort of hard to describe. They have a meter on top. And a meter is the headwear of the, maybe, Episcopalian to

the definitely the Catholic Church from, yeah, the bishop on up. I think Cardinals may. Basically, you know, the funky headwear that the pope wears, that's a meter. That's what's on top of the bishops piece. Yeah, and they vary greatly like between manufacturers. I've seen bishops that weren't quite as ornate, you know?

Yeah, but the ones that were originally manufactured by Jean Jacques. And then I think they're called the Eastman pieces. Oh, yeah. They have a meter on top. OK. And then you've got your king and your queen. I believe the king usually has a, well, like I said, it

all depends. The king's tallest. It is tallest. And that's how you remember what goes where. Yeah. Starting, and the board has to be a certain way as well. White is right. White is right.

So like there should always be the white square on your right corner. When you've got that set up, then you can start putting your pieces up, starting in the first rank, which is the horizontal row closest to you. That's right. You want to put your rooks, right? The little castle.

On the far left and the far right. Inside, one inside of the rooks are the knights. Then the bishops. And then you have two squares left. And the queen goes on the square that is the same color as her. That's right. What's the phrase?

The carpet matches the drapes. Oh, my god. No? Oh, no. The queen's dress must always match her shoes. Right. That's right. That's how you remember.

Yeah. And then the king goes in the remaining square. That's right. Then in the rank in front of that, you've got your pawns. That's right. All lined up on the eight squares. So like we said, the goal is to put the king in checkmate. And it helps to think of it, like I said, as a game of war

almost. You want to use all your little soldiers. And we'll talk about how they can be moved to capture and remove pieces to eventually make the other king vulnerable while also protecting your own king. Yeah. That's a big thing. Like if you overextend yourself in an attack,

you leave your king vulnerable. So it's not quite as simple as going on the offensive. No. Strategic. And I think it bears repeating again since the point of the whole game. When your opponent places your king in a vulnerable situation where the king cannot get out of without being checked.

Yeah. Or without being checkmated. That's checkmate. And the game is over. Yes. And the king, if in check, must make a move to get out of check, meaning either move the king or block or capture the piece that has the king in check.

Yeah. That's the only move you can make at that point. Yeah. So Chuck, in a second, let's talk about the individual pieces themselves. But first, let's do a message break real quick. Stuff you shouldn't know. This message is brought to you by Discover.

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Just go to Stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the page and enter our code stuff. Okay, so you want to look a little closer at the individual pieces? Yes, and this is something I did not know. Each piece is assigned a point value. Yeah. But you don't keep score.

No. It's basically just how much power it has. Yeah, and it's basically for you when you're thinking strategically. Yeah. You can very quickly say, well, this move would cost me this many points because I could lose this piece.

So it's a good way of just using shorthand for figuring out the value of a particular strategic move. Yeah, and once you know it, you don't even think of the points. So like you just innately kind of know, like this is a queen is the most valuable. Yeah, I think it comes in most handy for programming computers that play chess, too.

Oh, yeah, I bet. But let's start with the Rook, which it comes from the Persian word rock R-U-K-H, which means chariot, which is what the Rook, which is now a castle originally was. And I think the castle is actually a siege tower. Yeah, it looks like a little, is it called a turret? Yeah, a turret.

Is that right? I believe so. Yeah, it's a turret. But yes, so the Rook is the castle. That's right. It's got five points and it can move along the ranks and files only in a straight line, but it can move as far as you want.

If you have an open path from one end of the board to the other, you can slide that sucker all the way across. If you do that, something happens, which we'll talk about in a minute. That's right. Something magical. You can't jump over any pieces. And it says that for each piece.

Let's just go ahead and say, you can never jump over a piece. No, it's not checkers. No, it's not checkers. The only one that can kind of jump over a piece is a knight, which we'll see, but that one doesn't even actually jump. It makes a normal standard move. Well, we're there. Go ahead and say it.

Oh, okay. Well, the knight makes an L move. The knight is capable of moving forward two spaces and then to the left or the right one space. So it makes a little hook or crowbar or L movement with each move. Yeah, or it can move over to an up one. Yeah, that's what I said, right?

Well, you said forward two and over one. It can also be to the left two and one. Oh, okay. So it's always a combination of two and one. Right. That basically can make a turn, which is the only piece that can make a turn. And if you look at a chessboard

and see where your knight ends up, it looks like it leapt over a piece, but ultimately it's just making a left or a right. Yeah, that's true. Or an upper or a down. And that makes the knight pretty unique as far as strategy goes. Yeah, the knights always screw me.

Oh, yeah? Yeah, they just always would sneak up on me and I would kind of forget that they could, you know, move that one turnover. Crazy. Yeah. Craig, Craig. Craig, Craig.

And another good thing to remember, first of all, it's a three point piece, but if it starts on a light square, it's gonna end up on a dark square and vice versa. I think it's just so basic that the article just didn't even think it was important to mention, but I want to make sure I have this right. You want to get to a square where your opponent's pieces,

and when you move to that square, you take them out of play. They're off the board, right? Yes, essentially when you can land on another opponent's space where there is a piece, you just knock it out. And they're out of play. They can't come back in.

Can't come back in. And what you've just done by doing that is weakening the defenses against your opposing king. Yes. Okay. Exactly. Okay. Onto the bishop, topped with a meter, like you said.

It's also worth a three spot. It goes diagonally. Cannot go left and right. It can only attack diagonally. Right, but so it makes an X across the board. Yeah, but like the rook, it can go, and however far you can go with it. But when you move it, you have to go,

boop, or else you lose a turn. That's right. Then you've got your queen. It's worth nine points. She's a little shorter. But man, the queen is a tough broad because she can go in any direction, however far she wants to.

Yeah, all eight directions on the board. Basically no restrictions as long as it's in a straight line. She can't turn. Right. So that makes her the most strategically valuable piece. Yeah, and the queen's man, they'll sneak up on you too, because she can be all the way across the board

and you'll make a move and not even like realize that you just put like a knight in the path, you know, 10 spaces away until the jerk across from you captures your knight and you're like, oh man. I cannot wait to play. I hate that lady. I am so excited about playing thanks to this article. It's really fun.

I'm gonna start playing again, I think. Okay. I just need to, I don't know who, and we could always play here, I guess. I'll bring my bowling ball. I bet Ben Bolin plays chess. Oh, I'm sure he probably speaks Chinese while he plays chess.

He probably like shook his head when he heard you pronounce the Chinese version of chess. He probably plays that. Sure. Dressed as a bunny. He dressed up in my gremlin outfit today when he was walking around the office. Oh, today again?

Oh, did he do it already? Yeah, I thought you like tweeted a picture, Facebook, the picture of him wearing the gremlin outfit. No, I mean, that happened today. Someone else went out. It happened like weeks before too. No, no, wouldn't be. Oh, Ben Bolin, you should support his awesome show.

Two of them, stuff they don't want you to know and car stuff. Yes, one of our colleagues. So finally, onto the king. The king can also move in any direction, but just one at a time, which is good for getting out of the way. But the king is generally not like much of an attacker.

No, he's kind of a milk toast, really. Yeah, like the queen wears the pants in this relationship. She's the bad dude. And like we said, if the king is threatened and in check, he has to move to save himself. Yeah. And if he goes, well, if I move here, I'm screwed.

And if I move here, I'm screwed. There's wait, there's nowhere for me to move to get out of being attacked. That's checkmate, baby. That's when the guy across from me is very smug and just sitting there waiting for you to realize it. Yeah. Or actually, traditionally,

you would call out a theory in checkmate. Yes. Checkmate. Or actually, I would say check and mate. I don't understand the and. It's probably super obnoxious and wrong. I'm sure. And then you have your little pawns,

the eight little guys up front, the foot soldiers. They're basically cannon fodder. Pretty much, but pawns, some say, therein lies the key. If you play your pawns right, then you're in good shape. Did you know pawns originally in the, I think, 12th or 13th century, just to make them more interesting,

each pawn, depending on its place on the rank, had a name. Like there was the gambler. Oh, yeah? There was the doctor, the. The coward of the county? Probably. Were they all Kenny Rogers songs?

Yeah, probably, exactly. What else was there? There were a couple others that were pretty interesting, but apparently it didn't stick. The innkeeper. The islands in the stream. Right, so the pawns can, they're only worth one point. They are defenders, basically.

They only move one square at a time. They can't go backwards. They can only go forwards, and they can only attack diagonally. Right. So you can't, I can't just move a pawn, like let's say you're a pawn and I'm a pawn. I can't just come at you

from straight ahead and knock you out. We're basically just kind of staring at each other. But if I was to the left or right in front of you, I could go diagonally and get ahold of you. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. It does, I'm trying to visualize.

Chest is hard to visualize. Yeah, and it's the kind of game that sounds complicated, but once you play it, once you're like, oh, okay, this isn't so hard. So then the pawn can move five directions, left or right, forward, and then diagonally forward or to the left or diagonally forward to the right, right? No, no, no.

It cannot move left or right. Okay, so it can only move forward, diagonally to the left or diagonally to the right. Correct. So three directions. Yes, okay. And when you start the game, it's the only time you can move your pawn two spaces.

So you can move out a pawn two spaces on the front row only. After that, it can only move one space at a time. Gotcha. All right. Okay, so let's talk about some rules. Yeah. Like we haven't been already.

Yeah, the timer thing is, I never realized what the timer was all about. I can't imagine how stressful that is. Yeah, I thought the timer, I thought you had like, each player has like 60 seconds to complete a move or something. That is not true.

No, like those clocks with the two faces and the buttons on top of each face, they keep a predetermined amount of time. Yeah, a total time. So say like an hour. Say you have an hour for this game. Yeah, you each have an hour. Or, okay, so you each have an hour.

So there's two hours for the whole game. You divide the two hours into one hour for each. And then when it's your turn, your clock is running. And when you're done with your move, you hit the button on top of your side and it stops your clock and starts your opponent's clock. So now they're eating away from that two hours.

And then if your opponent's time runs out, then you win just based on that. Yeah, which is way cooler than I thought, which was like you each have like two minutes to complete a move. And this way, toward the end of a game, you might have 10 minutes left on your clock and your opponent might have 30 minutes

because you took way too much time at the beginning and then you're forced into playing like way faster toward the end. Pretty cool. So the impression I have is that this is something that you take up once you've mastered chess so well that it's kind of boring playing normally.

You have never played with it before. Because I imagine it changes everything, you know? All right, so let's play with these rules here. Okay. Why it always goes first? Why it always goes first. You cannot skip a turn. Nope.

And therefore no player can move twice in a row. Yeah, you can't like say, I pass. Right. You gotta move. Yeah, you can take back a move but only under a very specific circumstance. We said that capturing the king is an illegal move. So if you move your king into a place

where he will inevitably be captured, you moved him into check. That's an illegal move. And the opponent's supposed to tell you and then you can take that move back. That's the only move you can take back. So I think that the rule of thumb is once you take your hand off of your piece,

your move is completed. But that's how I always played. Yeah, it seems legitimate. And also now that I have not played it and I'm a little older, I bet you that it's better to try and do this stuff in your head than move your pieces all around with your finger on it.

Because I would imagine that would sort of tip off your strategy somewhat. I bet like a real pro's do this in their head. They don't like go, hmm, right? No, what? My finger's still on it. And I think they play it with a clock too, don't they? Probably, yeah.

And you want to say part of strategy, you want to be thinking at least three moves I had anyway. I imagine that's very tough. Good luck with that, beginner. What else? You said that you can't move a pawn more than one square at a time except for to start. Yeah, each pawn's first move can either be one or two.

Gotcha. It's not necessarily like at the beginning of the game. This message is brought to you by Discover. Did you know you could reduce the number of unwanted calls and emails with online privacy protection, the latest innovation from Discover? Discover will help regularly remove your personal info,

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Just go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the page and enter our code STUFF. Oh, I like this one. You know the word stalemate? Yeah. Stalemate is a chess term. It happens when if the king isn't under attack, but any direction that you move him in

would place him in check. Yeah. So there's no checkmate going or coming. It's just, you just happen to end up making a terrible move. That's a stalemate, no one wins. Sorry, everybody goes home, a loser. That's no fun.

All right, here's some other rules, which I did not know about. I have never played with these rules and they were really confusing to me. Yeah, I had to do some supplemental research. I did too, like YouTube videos and stuff, where Englishmen explained exactly what castling is. Right.

I think I have a decent hand on it, but go ahead. Well, castling in this article, it says that it has to be done at the beginning of the game. I didn't see that anywhere else. I think it can only be done once a game. Well, here's the deal, I got to the bottom of this. Okay. It can be done as long as the king

and the rook that you're going to use to castle with has not moved yet. Right. So as long as they are still in their original positions, you can castle. Yeah, but that doesn't necessarily have to happen at the beginning of the game. No.

But you can move your king two pieces and then move the rook that hasn't moved. That's your castle, right? To the last space, the king passed. So that means basically what you're doing is you're moving your king over and you're moving your rook next to it so that your rook can protect your king more better.

Better, yeah. Yeah, and you can only do this if there's nothing in between the two. And you can do it on either side. You can do a, on the king side or the queen side. And it's the only move where you can move two pieces at once. Right. And you don't have to, but strategically,

it's a very smart move to castle anytime you can. Yeah, I still don't fully get it or the benefits. I know it's a defensive move. I don't understand why you have to move the king. Why not just move the rook next to the king? Like that seems like that would be the same thing. Yeah. I think someone will be able to explain this

in a dummy's fashion via email. I know we're gonna get a good one about that. But I think that is what it amounts to. It's a defensive move to make the rook put it in a better position to protect the king. Yeah. There's pawn promotion. Never heard of that until today.

So there is pawn promotion where you said like if the pawn just makes it all the way across the board into your opposing rank either the first rank or the eighth rank depending on where your opponent is, you could promote your pawn. Never heard of this. Most people choose to promote their pawn to queen. Sure.

But in certain instances, I have no idea what they are, but I just saw that in certain instances, it's better, it might be better to promote it to something else other than queen. And that would be a different type of promotion. It's like not a full promotion. A lateral promotion. I can't.

Title only promotion. I can't remember what the name of it is, but yes. So typically you'd wanna promote it to the queen because it's the best piece. And then you have two queens on the board. Yeah. If you still have your queen, that is. Yeah, and I don't know, I'd never heard of these.

So I don't know if they're to seldom used or if it's just really rare that a pawn actually makes it to the other side. Cause that would seem pretty rare to me. I think they're fairly well used or frequently used sub rules. Okay, I know this last one is not for fact, en peissant.

It's not a frequently used rule. It's really obscure. So much so that the term en peissant is used in other sports to describe little known obscure rules. Oh wow. So it's become kind of a, just a catch all term. Chess has really had a huge cultural impact on the world. Yeah.

Like in all sorts of strange ways, huh? Yeah. Stale mate. So en peissant means in passing. It's pretty tricky. It allows a pawn to capture an opponent's pawn. By doing nothing though. Without landing on the square.

No. So from what I understand, this article's a little wrong. Basically it allows you to capture a pawn as if the pawn had only moved one square. And it can only be played after a two square advance. So confusing. Right, so if a pawn moves two squares and happens to pass an opposing pawn.

Yes. Then the pawn that moved two squares who made the move is out. Yeah, it's almost like it can attack from the side, I think. But it ultimately is attacking itself. The pawn that's just sitting there. Yeah. Captures that pawn that made the move.

Yes. So you basically just made a bonehead move because you just lost your pawn. Yeah, it can only be done too if the pawn comes from home base and moves two squares. Which can only happen once a game, right? I think man. Didn't we just say a pawn can only move

two squares in one, like at the beginning of a game? Each pawn, yeah. Yeah, so that could, yeah, that is obscure. Yeah, I've never heard of it. And I don't, I think I found that not many people use it. All passant. Nice. So those are the rules and sub rules.

Yeah. Let's talk strategy, man. Yeah, protect your king. Capture the opponent's pieces. Right. And attack the king. Attack him like you hate him. That's not really strategy.

I mean, that's just the basic like what you're trying to do. There are like real strategies that people have worked out with names. Yeah, they have like names. King's Gambit. The Schenectady Shuffle. The Fork Attack. Or the Fiancetto.

Ketto, C-H in Italian makes a K sound. Fiancetto? Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know much about these strategies, but I know if you want to get better at chess, then you would do yourself a favor by trying to learn one or two instead of just being like,

well, this guy goes this way and I don't like horses. So I'm going to attack the knight, which is how I play. That's awesome strategy. But what are some other basic strategies? Like let's say you're a beginner, like you. Okay. What should you try to do?

I would be well served to not rush. I would be well served to not rush. I would be well served to not rush. Sure. I want to consider what your next move would be after I made my move, but I want to do all this with my arms folded across my chest in my head.

Very quietly. So as not to give away my strategy. Yeah. I want to castle whenever possible. Castle the king with the rook. Yeah. So that must be like a real like common thing. Yeah.

I need, I feel like I missed out. You didn't castle. That's why your brother beat you. I had no idea. You were like, what'd you just do? He's like, nevermind. Like we said, the center of the board is where you would like to control things.

Yeah. Oh, you want to use all your pieces. Yeah. Move them around. Yeah. Smartly though. Yeah. Those pawns like we said are important.

You got to, you got to bring them out so you can start attacking. Don't like, it's not a good strategy to just be like, all right, I'm just going to surround my king with the pawns and just leave them all there. Right. Like you want to get that queen out. And like we said, you can't jump.

So you got to move stuff out of the way so everything can get out there and start warring. Exactly. Like I said, you want to plan three moves ahead. Yeah. And as you were saying, like you want to get your stuff out on the board, but you want to do it strategically. You want to set yourself up, take your time.

Yeah. Don't attack too quickly. Right. Because again, that leaves your king overexposed. And you never want to sacrifice a piece of higher value for lesser value. Yeah, that's the big one, I think. That's the one even, I think I remember trying to employ.

Yeah. Not successfully, but yeah. You don't want to, you don't want to lose a rook to a pawn. Right. You're just a sucker. And then probably the most important strategy is to have fun and not get discouraged. Which I think that probably makes a lot of sense.

Like I don't think chess is something you just come out and play well the first time. No. No one in the history of the world since 300 AD has ever played chess or Chaturanga or anything. Yeah. Well, the first time. If you're a beginner, I think you should just concentrate

your first few games on getting the moves correct. Yeah. And then you can start worrying about everything else. But I mean, if you want to get better very quickly, in addition to playing, there's all sorts of websites, books, people you can talk to. And there's a lot of info out there to learn how to play chess.

Yeah. Now that I'm thinking about it, I don't know that I've ever won a single game of chess. I always play people better than me. I think my record is like 0 and 63 and I quit playing. Yeah. I can see that, but I mean, you know, maybe play a little kid if you're not that great.

A kid who sucks at chess. I was about to say that's even more embarrassing. No, a kid that sucks at chess. Yeah. I don't gloat too much because it's a kid. No, I'd gloat. So that's everything there is to know about chess. You got anything else?

I got nothing else. If you want to learn more about chess and see a pretty nifty little flash animation, you can type in C-H-E-S-S into the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com and it will bring up this article. And since I said search bar, it means it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this Maori Love.

And like we said, the Kiwis love a little light shining on them. And so we've heard back from them in spades. Yeah, have you ever seen Bad Taste? Oh, no, I don't think so. What is that? I think it's Peter Jackson's first movie. Yeah, I never saw that one.

I saw the other one he did, Dead Alive. I saw that one too. Yeah, I didn't see Bad Taste. I like Bad Taste. Boy, the Hobbit. I like Dead Alive though too. In just the schlockiest way you can like something. Sure.

Yeah, I didn't see the Hobbit, but this next Hobbit sequel in the never-ending parade of Hobbit movies actually looks kind of interesting. Yeah, I didn't see all of the Hobbit. I watched some of it the other night and I just couldn't do it. You ever heard of Rob Delaney, the Twitter guy?

He had this tweet. He was like, it was in all caps. He goes, I'm in the Hobbit right now. It's eight and a half hours long. They won't let anybody leave. Please send. And then like it just runs out. In Heavenly Creatures, did you ever see that?

No. Man, that was really good. Yeah. That was the first time I'd seen Kate Winslet in a movie. Really good movie. Yeah, I haven't seen it. All right, enough about Peter Jackson. Onto the Maori.

I thought you guys, I thought it sent you a quick email to sincerely congratulate you on how you handled the Maori podcast. Pronunciation of Maori words and phrases uses a style of linguistic that is totally different to most languages. See, I don't feel so bad now. Yeah, like the wa is actually pronounced fa.

Yeah, well, we're getting to that. As a 20-year-old Kiwi, I often mispronounce Maori words myself. And due to the nature of trying to put a largely oral language into words, spelling and pronunciation often change through the years. Still, why would you choose w for f sound? I thought I'd give you some Maori words

and easy up their pronunciation for you guys. So that white tangi, as we said, the treaty, is pronounced wa tangi. Which is the w sound, is the w sound in that one? Yeah, that's what he says. Okay. He said, it's as though you're questioning someone's recipe for salsa.

Why say that? That's awesome. Wait, people in New Zealand know about salsa. Yeah, that's weird. Aoratiorora, or land of the long white cloud, is pronounced Aotearoa. Aotearoa. Okay, and that's New Zealand.

It's the Maori word for New Zealand, right? I think so, yeah. Words that begin with the w-h prefix, you were talking about, are almost always pronounced as an f sound. So waka papa sounds more like waka papa. It sounds weird to us. Yeah.

And even dirty, but it's not, that's how it's pronounced. That's how the Maori pronounced the word that we butchered all over our episode, basically. Yeah, exactly. Or the town of Wanganui is pronounced Funganui. Yeah, it's so weird. And hard to get used to. But one of my favorites, guys, is a small town of...

But hold on, it is weird, it's weird to us. And like the faka papa word sounds hilarious, especially if you're in sixth grade or whatever. Yeah, exactly. But, I mean, this is, again, that's how it's pronounced in Maori. And therefore, if you're saying a Maori word, you can't really just change the pronunciation

based on your own cultural hang-up, you know? Agreed. So here's the final one. Is the small town of Waikika-Ka-Mao-Kao is pronounced Waikika-Mu-Kao. If you know the correct pronunciation the second time, why'd you, what? Well, I mean, I was just reading it as if I was a rude...

Oh. Which I am. Like basically during our Maori episode. Yeah, again, I'm really surprised that we got a lot of praise for this one. Yeah, I think that there was delighted that we talked about them and probably got a good laugh because no one can pronounce these words.

Yeah, somebody wrote in until they faced poem like 26 times. Yeah. But they probably laughed about it. Yeah. On the whole, though, guys, it wouldn't worry about offending Kiwis too much. We're a small nation and we're usually just happy if we find out people in other countries

know we exist as a separate entity from Australia. Plus, they produced play of the Concords, which is a pretty big, that's a big production. Thanks again, that's from Tom. Thanks, Tom. How would you say Tom in Kiwi? Foma. No, it's actually T-O-M, not the weird T-H-O-M.

Yeah, like Tom York. Yeah. What's he doing? Tom Yorki. Yeah. That's what I call him. He's good, though. Yeah, he's great.

Well, thank you very much, Tom. We appreciate that. And thank you to everybody who wrote in to say, way to go on Maori, we were blown away. I'm glad to hear from you guys down there. We're up there depending on what direction you're traveling. If you want to let us know that we did so-so, or really great, or not that great, on any episode,

or if you have any great explanations on anything about chess, any tips, any tricks, any strategy, we'd love to share it with everybody. Yeah, basic strategies. Right. Don't get too weird with the King's Gambit. Yes, well, I'll bet that's like a totally basic strategy.

Yeah, probably. You can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.discovery.com. And as always, you can join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com.

Visit gait1travel.com for more information or to book your tour. That's gaitthennumber1travel.com. Once again, use promo code HEART20 through January 30th to receive 20% off your 2023 trip. So much South Dakota, so little time.