How to

Chess looks so tidy from the outside: 64 squares, 32 pieces, two players, one king to trap. Then you start learning the stories behind the game, and it turns out to be wonderfully strange. The queen wasn’t always powerful. The clock changed how people played. A single tiny pawn move can look illegal if you don’t know the rule. And the number of possible games is so huge that it makes “I’ve seen this position before” feel a little funny. That’s part of the charm. Chess is a ba