Checkmate (often shortened to mate) is any game position in chess and other chess-like games in which a player's king is in check (threatened with capture) and there is no possible escape. Checkmating the opponent wins the game.
In chess, the king is never actually captured. The player loses as soon as their king is checkmated. In formal games, it is usually considered good etiquette to resign an inevitably lost game before being checkmated.
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The king (♔, ♚) is one of the six types of pieces in the game of chess and represents the most important unit on the board. It may move to any adjacent square that is not controlled by an enemy piece; it may also perform, in tandem with the rook, a special move called castling. If a player's king is threatened with capture, it is said to be in check, and the player must remove or evade the threat of capture immediately, such as by moving it away from the attacked square. If this cannot be done, the king is said to be in checkmate, resulting in a loss for that player. A player cannot make any move that places their own king in check. Despite this, the king can become a strong offensive piece in the endgame or, rarely, the middlegame.
In algebraic notation, the king is abbreviated by the letter K among English speakers. The white king starts the game on e1; the black king starts on e8. Unlike all other pieces, each player can have only one king, and the kings are never removed from the board during the game.
Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves no hidden information and no elements of chance. It is played on a square board consisting of 64 squares arranged in an 8×8 grid. The players, referred to as "White" and "Black", each control sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns, with each type of piece having a different pattern of movement. An enemy piece may be captured (removed from the board) by moving one's own piece onto the square it occupies. The object of the game is to "checkmate" (threaten with inescapable capture) the enemy king. There are also several ways a game can end in a draw.
The recorded history of chess dates back to the emergence of chaturanga in 7th century India. Chaturanga is also thought to be an ancestor of similar games like Janggi, xiangqi and shogi. After its introduction to Persia, it spread to the Arab world and then to Europe. The modern rules of chess emerged in Europe at the end of the 15th century, becoming standardized and gaining universal acceptance by the end of the 19th century. Today, chess is one of the world's most popular games, with millions of players worldwide.
In chess, there are a number of ways that a game can end in a draw, in which neither player wins. Draws are codified by various rules of chess including stalemate (when the player to move is not in check but has no legal move), threefold repetition (when the same position occurs three times with the same player to move), and the fifty-move rule (when the last fifty successive moves made by both players contain no capture or pawn move). Under the standard FIDE rules, a draw also occurs in a dead position (when no sequence of legal moves can lead to checkmate), most commonly when neither player has sufficient material to checkmate the opponent.
Unless specific tournament rules forbid it, players may agree to a draw at any time. Ethical considerations may make a draw uncustomary in situations where at least one player has a reasonable chance of winning. For example, a draw could be called after a move or two, but this would likely be thought unsporting.