All 24 Chess flashcards. Free.
The whole deck, not a sample — Chess is 24 cards, which is no longer than the 30 we give away on every deck, so there is nothing left to charge for. 11 pages, US Letter, black and white. Grades 4–12.
No account, no email, no card details.
11 pages, and the backs are already right
Every front sheet is followed by its own back sheet with the rows reversed. Print double-sided, flip on the long edge, and answer number 7 is behind question number 7. Print a deck you built yourself, flip on the short edge, and every answer lands on the wrong card — which nobody finds out until sixty cards have been cut apart.
- 24 cards — counted out of the file, not rounded up
- Eight cards a sheet, with cut guides
- US Letter PDF, black and white, photocopier-friendly
- Print a set per student, every class, every year
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.
Every card here is cited to two independent sources
Two different organisations — not a standards body and a website reprinting it — and a script refuses the card if the two disagree, so the check runs on every card rather than on the ones somebody remembered to look at. A second specialist then re-verified this deck from sources of their own, without reading our citations first. A further 5,420 cards across 30 other decks were read end to end by a subject specialist instead, and we say which is which on every deck rather than averaging the two into one flattering word.
What 24 printed cards do that a screen does not
A phone deck is one card at a time. A printed deck is a pile you can split: the ones you know, the ones you nearly know, and the ones you keep missing. That third pile is the entire study session, and it is the thing a scrolling app hides from you.
- Print once, use all year. The licence covers a set per student, every class, every year.
- No device, no login, no data. Works in a cover lesson, on a bus, or at a kitchen table. Grades 4–12, filed under career, tech & modern.
- Change what you disagree with. Every card loads into the free maker on this site. Reword it, drop it, add your own, reprint.
Here are all 24 cards
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
Questions
- How do I print them double-sided?
- Double-sided, flip on the long edge. Every front sheet is followed by its own already-mirrored back sheet, so print them in the order they come and every answer lands on its own card.
- Can I edit the cards?
- Yes, and that is half the point. Once you own the deck, the "Buy & edit" button here opens all 24 cards in the free flash card maker on this site — reword a definition, delete the ones you do not teach, add your own, and print at anything from two to nine cards a page, rather than the fixed eight of the PDF.
- Can I print a set for every student?
- Yes. Personal and classroom licence: unlimited printing, every class you teach, every year you teach it. It does not cover reselling the file or passing it on to a colleague.
- What if I find a card that is wrong?
- Tell us and we fix it, and we publish what changed. We have withdrawn a whole deck from sale for being out of date rather than quietly patch it.
- Do I need an account?
- No. The file downloads straight away — no account, no email, no card details.