Chess Flashcards

Chess flashcards — the free 24

Every question and answer on the free cards, written out. Check them against your own textbook before you spend anything.

King — how does it move?

One square in any direction, to a square no enemy piece attacks; plus castling

Queen — how does it move?

Any number of squares along a rank, file or diagonal — but never over an intervening piece

Rook — how does it move?

Any number of squares along its rank or file — never over an intervening piece

Bishop — how does it move?

Any number of squares along its diagonals — never over a piece, so it keeps its starting colour

Knight — how does it move?

One square along a rank or file, then one diagonally outward — an L, and it may jump pieces

Pawn — how does it move?

Forward one square (two from its start square, both empty); never backwards

Pawn — how does it capture?

One square diagonally forward — the only piece that captures differently from how it moves

Which piece may jump over other pieces?

The knight only — bishop, rook and queen may not, and the pawn may not

Castling — what actually happens?

One move: the king goes 2 squares toward a rook, then that rook lands on the square the king crossed

Castling — what makes it permanently illegal?

That king has already moved, or that rook has — the right is lost for the rest of the game

Castling — the check restriction, in full

Never out of, through, or into check — the king's square, the square it crosses and its target must be unattacked

Castling — what must be true of the squares between king and rook?

All empty — any piece between them, either colour, prevents castling

Castling — do the check restrictions apply to the rook too?

No — the rook may stand on, or cross, an attacked square (b1/b8 queenside); only the king is limited

En passant — when is it available?

Only in immediate reply to an enemy pawn's two-square advance past your pawn's attacked square

En passant — what does the capturing pawn do?

Takes the pawn as if it had advanced only one square, landing on the square it skipped

Promotion — what happens when a pawn reaches the last rank?

It must be exchanged, in the same move, for a queen, rook, bishop or knight of its own colour

Promotion — may you decline it, or promote to a king?

No to both — promotion is compulsory, and only Q, R, B or N. Captured pieces do not limit the choice

Check — what is it, and what may you not do?

The king is attacked by one or more enemy pieces; no move may leave or place your own king in check

Checkmate — define it

The king is in check and no legal move ends the check — the game ends at once and that player loses

Stalemate — define it

The player to move is NOT in check and has no legal move — a draw, not a win

Fifty-move rule — state it

Draw on correct claim by the player to move: the last 50 moves by each side, no capture, no pawn move

Threefold repetition — state it

Draw on correct claim when the same position, same player to move, is about to appear or has just appeared 3 times

Repetition — when are two positions 'the same'?

Same pieces of the same colour on the same squares, same player to move, same castling and en-passant rights

Which draws by repetition or move count need no claim?

75 moves by each side with no capture or pawn move, and the same position a 5th time — automatic

Chess flashcards — questions people ask

How many cards are in the Chess flashcard deck?

The Chess deck on PuzzlePage has 24 cards, and all 24 are free to play and free to download with no account and no payment. 24 cards. Chess has exactly six pieces, so the movement half of the topic is six facts plus the pawn's separate capture and the knight's jump. The rest of the deck is the closed set of rules that actually trip people up: castling (five cards, because the conditions and the restrictions are different things), en passant, promotion, check, checkmate, stalemate, the fifty-move rule, threefold repetition and the automatic draws. There is no twenty-fifth rule to add without repeating one of these.

What is on the chess flashcards?

How each chess piece moves under the FIDE Laws of Chess, plus castling, en passant, promotion, check, checkmate, stalemate and the drawing rules. Cards look like this: King — how does it move? → One square in any direction, to a square no enemy piece attacks; plus castling; Queen — how does it move? → Any number of squares along a rank, file or diagonal — but never over an intervening piece. The deck is written for grades 4–12 and filed under career, tech & modern.

Can I study chess flashcards online for free?

Yes. All 24 cards of the Chess deck play free in any web browser at puzzlepage.app, with no account, no app and no card details. It works on a phone, tablet, Chromebook, laptop or classroom projector. Practice mode flips through the cards with nothing scored; quiz mode makes you answer each card before it flips, times the run and scores it.

Are the chess flashcards accurate?

Every card in the Chess deck cites two independent published sources — two different organisations, not a standards body and a site reprinting it — and a script checks that, rather than taking the writer's word for it. A second specialist then re-verified the deck against sources of their own, without reading the citations first. That is the difference from a user-generated flashcard site, where the cards are whatever a stranger typed and nobody is accountable for them.

Can I print the chess flashcards?

Yes. The Chess cards are available as a printable double-sided PDF to cut up, as well as playable in the browser. The whole 24-card printable is free to download, with no account.

How should I use the Chess deck to revise?

Start in practice mode and go through the Chess deck once without scoring, to find out which cards you already know — the deck is dealt in a different order every time you open it, so you are recalling the card rather than its position. Then switch to quiz mode, which times and scores the run and lets you re-run only the cards you missed. Use the "flip deck" control to swap which side is the question: recognising an answer is much easier than producing one, so a deck you find easy one way round is usually the harder and more useful drill the other way. Two or three short sessions across a week beat one long one, which is the whole reason flashcards work.

What grade level are the chess flashcards for?

The Chess deck is written for grades 4–12. Because the cards are plain term-and-answer pairs, they are also used outside that band — by adults revising career, tech & modern, and by teachers running them as a whole-class starter on a projector.