In most chess sets, the king will a bit slightly larger than the queen. You can tell the king and queen apart by their size. How can you tell the king and queen apart? In the starting position, the white king is placed on e1 and the black king on e8. Often you can also recognize the king by the cross on top. In most chess sets, the king is the tallest of all the chess pieces.

You start the game with 8 pawns, 2 knights, 2 bishops, 2 rooks, 1 queen, and 1 king. The 16 pieces in chess are divided in 6 different types that are called the pawn, knight, bishop, rook, queen, and king. However, if you are still unsure on some things, the following questions might answer them for you. If you have read this far, you hopefully know what all the pieces in chess are called and what they look like.

You can see several examples in the pictures below. Regardless of which chess set you are playing with, the pawns in chess normally look very similar. Moreover, their design is relatively simple compared to the other pieces, and you have more pawns than any other piece at the start of the game. On the chessboard, you can easily recognize the pawns because they are the smallest pieces. Moreover, the pawn is the only piece that can’t move backwards, can promote when it reaches the opposite side of the board, and can take other pawns on passant.Īs you can see, the pawn has a lot of special movement rules compared to the other pieces. Instead of capturing forwards, the pawn captures diagonally.

The pawn in chess can move one or two squares forwards on the first move, and only one move on every subsequent move. You start the game with 8 pawns that occupy the second rank from a2 to h2 for white, and the 7th rank from a7 to h7 for black. However, several pawns working together can be a powerful force that is difficult to stop. The pawn is the weakest piece on the chess board.

Original chess piece names