Securing a King Piece on an Online Board
Kings are the most important chess pieces on an online board. Securing them to the end is what the game is all about. Here's how we play online chess kings with precaution.
Kings move in any direction on the board. They may move left or right, forward or backward as other major pieces can, and also diagonally in any direction. But their limit is to move only one square at a time. This makes them easy targets for a capture—or a checkmate. The term "checkmate" is used exclusively for checking kings that will surely result to their capture.
Online, kings are as vulnerable and weak as on traditional boards. Although they are often used for support, and blocking, especially during a checkmate against the opponent. For instance, if we have a king and queen remaining on the board and the opponent has a lone king, it will be impossible to checkmate the enemy king without the cooperation of our king. We have to corner the enemy king with our king and check it with our queen.
Online chess kings should be clicked on first before we can move them. Then we put them on a square we choose and then click on them again. But prior to making the second click we must be very sure of its safety on the square we put it on. Some games would warn us of the danger of putting our king on a square were it will be captured. So always double check the safety of the square we plan to put our king on.
When we have cornered the enemy king and it has nowhere to go but to be captured, the website software program announces a checkmate and declare us winner. Then, the program would ask as for a re-match or a fresh game. We will also be presented an option to close and logout.
A win is not just checkmating the enemy king. In tournaments, it is also through having the opponent run out of time. In ordinary online games, taking long to checkmate the enemy king will incur a rating of a "long game." This is not a good image, especially when we have won against the computer program on novice play mode.
Online chess kings are as precious as on traditional boards. But we have to be doubly careful online because the touch-move ruling is more strictly observed. We have to study our king's situation thoroughly before clicking on it a second time.