A King cannot be captured. In effect, the King cannot move to a square controlled by an enemy piece; so there never arises such a case. We say a square is "controlled by a piece" if the piece can capture on this square.

Also note that, regarding a Knight's move, there are no interfering friendly or enemy pieces; the Knight can always land to its destination square.

A pawn that manages to traverse all the way to get to the other side is "promoted". When a promotion happens the player replaces the pawn with a same-coloured piece of his choice (King and Pawn excluded). In most cases pawns are promoted to Queens.

The King has also a special move at his disposal. It is called "castling" and is a defensive move, used to increase the King's safety. Castling may be either "short" or "long". Consider the white King on e1 (Ke1) and the white Rook on h1 (Rh1). "Short castling" involves moving the King to g1 and simultaneously the Rook to f1.

The whole procedure is considered to be one single move, not two (we denote short castling by "O-O"). However, there are some constraints before one can castle : both the King and the Rook must have not moved before, all in-between squares must be empty and both landing squares (f1 and g1 in the example) must not be threatened by the enemy pieces. In addition, the King must not be in check.

If all these apply, one may castle. Long castling (denoted by "O-O-O") is similar, the only difference being that the a-Rook is used instead. The ending squares are c1 for the King and d1 for the Rook. All the same applies for BLACK too, the corresponding squares being g8 and f8 for short castling and c8 and d8 for long castling.

Long Castling

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