Ruling — Chess — RuleSage

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You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Chessbg-171-en-1e

1. Set up the pieces so that opposing Kings and Queens are directly opposite each other.[1]

2. Ensure the square in the lower right hand corner is a light square.[1]

3. Place the White Queen on a light square and the Black Queen on a dark square.[1]

4. White moves first, and then players take turns moving.[1]

5. Move only one piece per turn, with the exception of castling.[1]

6. Move pieces according to their specific rules:

* The Queen can move any number of squares horizontally, vertically, or diagonally if her path is not blocked.[1]

* The Bishop can move any number of squares diagonally if its path is not blocked.[1]

* The Rook can move any number of squares vertically or horizontally if its path is not blocked.[2]

* The Knight can jump over other pieces, moving in an "L" shape (two squares horizontally or vertically and then a right-angle turn for one more square).[2]

* The Pawn moves straight ahead (never backward) one square at a time, though it has the option to move two squares on its first move; it captures diagonally.[2]

* The King can move one square in any direction, but may never move into check.[2]

7. Capture an opponent's piece by moving your piece to its square, then remove the opponent's piece from the board.[1]

8. Perform special moves as allowed:

* Castling: Move the King two squares toward a Rook, and simultaneously move that Rook to the square beside the King, provided neither piece has moved before, the King is not in or moving through check, and no pieces are between them.[3]

* En passant: Capture a pawn that has just moved two squares forward by moving your pawn as if it had only moved one square forward.[4]

* Pawn promotion: If a pawn reaches the opposite end of the board, promote it to another piece, such as a Queen.[2]

9. Follow the rules of check:

* If the King is attacked ("checked"), it must get out of check immediately by capturing the attacking piece, placing a piece between the King and the attacker (unless the attacker is a Knight or Pawn), or moving the King away from the attack.[4]

* You may not move a piece into check.[1][4]

10. End the game:

* Checkmate: If a player is in check and has no way to get out of it, they are checkmated and lose the game.[4]

* Stalemate: If a player is not in check but has no legal moves, the game is a draw.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Chess — "Let's Play Chess" (beginner primer) · p.2 · Let's Play Chess · The Pieces and How They Move

[2] RULEBOOK Chess — "Let's Play Chess" (beginner primer) · p.2 · a The King q · USCF IS YOUR CONNECTION TO THE CHESS COMMUNITY.

[3] RULEBOOK Chess — "Let's Play Chess" (beginner primer) · p.1 · Getting Better · CASTLING

[4] RULEBOOK Chess — "Let's Play Chess" (beginner primer) · p.1 · EN PASSANT · About Check and Checkmate · Let's Play Chess

One rule clearer, zero feelings hurt.

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 168 ms · ask 5888 ms · total 6058 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6058 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 1, "score": 0.032522, "snippet": "U 'Let's Play Chess' includes all the basic rules and pointers you will need to get started on a lifetime of chess fun. You will be ready to find chess partners among the millions of chess enthusiasts around the world. You're invited to join the U.S. Chess Federation, a not-for-profit membership org", "headingPath": "Getting Better · CASTLING", "sharpsignalDocId": 171}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.032266, "snippet": "U Chess is a game for two players, one with the 'White' pieces and one with the 'Black' pieces. At the beginning of the game, the pieces are set up as pictured at right. (See diagrams below to identify pieces.) These hints will help you to remember the proper board setup: Opposing Kings and Queens g", "headingPath": "Let's Play Chess · The Pieces and How They Move", "sharpsignalDocId": 171}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.032002, "snippet": "This French phrase is used for a special pawn capture. It means 'in passing,' and it occurs when one player moves a pawn two squares forward to try to avoid capture by the opponent's pawn. The capture is made exactly as if the player had moved the pawn only one square forward. In the diagram, one of", "headingPath": "EN PASSANT · About Check and Checkmate · Let's Play Chess", "sharpsignalDocId": 171}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.03101, "snippet": "❇ A subscription to our world-famous monthly magazine, Chess Life . ❇ Contact with local chess clubs and the right to earn a national rating. ❇ The right to play in over-the-board tournaments, on the Internet, and through the mail. ❇ Discounts on chess books and equipment. ❇ Ability to receive speci", "headingPath": "Membership Benefits:", "sharpsignalDocId": 171}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.015625, "snippet": "The King is the most important piece. When he is trapped, his whole army loses. The King can move one square in any direction - for example, to any of the squares with dots in this diagram. (An exception is castling, which is explained later.) The King may never move into check - that is, onto a squ", "headingPath": "a The King q · USCF IS YOUR CONNECTION TO THE CHESS COMMUNITY.", "sharpsignalDocId": 171}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Let's Play Chess · The Pieces and How They Move", "sharpsignalDocId": 171}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "a The King q · USCF IS YOUR CONNECTION TO THE CHESS COMMUNITY.", "sharpsignalDocId": 171}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Getting Better · CASTLING", "sharpsignalDocId": 171}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "EN PASSANT · About Check and Checkmate · Let's Play Chess", "sharpsignalDocId": 171}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 167 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 167 boosted
answered-before recall: this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.91706 of 1893 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 25, 2026 16:11 UTC

retrieval — what the passage search returned

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK Chess — "Let's Play Chess" (beginner primer) (corpus doc 171)	Getting Better · CASTLING	p.1	0.032522 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#2	RULEBOOK Chess — "Let's Play Chess" (beginner primer) (corpus doc 171)	Let's Play Chess · The Pieces and How They Move	p.2	0.032266 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#3	RULEBOOK Chess — "Let's Play Chess" (beginner primer) (corpus doc 171)	EN PASSANT · About Check and Checkmate · Let's Play Chess	p.1	0.032002 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#4	RULEBOOK Chess — "Let's Play Chess" (beginner primer) (corpus doc 171)	Membership Benefits:	p.2	0.03101 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#5	RULEBOOK Chess — "Let's Play Chess" (beginner primer) (corpus doc 171)	a The King q · USCF IS YOUR CONNECTION TO THE CHESS COMMUNITY.	p.2	0.015625 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	300

what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 5 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Chess — "Let's Play Chess" (beginner primer) (corpus doc 171)	Let's Play Chess · The Pieces and How They Move	p.2	#2	0.032266 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Chess — "Let's Play Chess" (beginner primer) (corpus doc 171)	Getting Better · CASTLING	p.1	#1	0.032522 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Chess — "Let's Play Chess" (beginner primer) (corpus doc 171)	Membership Benefits:	p.2	#4	0.03101 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Chess — "Let's Play Chess" (beginner primer) (corpus doc 171)	a The King q · USCF IS YOUR CONNECTION TO THE CHESS COMMUNITY.	p.2	#5	0.015625 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Chess — "Let's Play Chess" (beginner primer) (corpus doc 171)	EN PASSANT · About Check and Checkmate · Let's Play Chess	p.1	#3	0.032002 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Chess — "Let's Play Chess" (beginner primer) (corpus doc 171)	Let's Play Chess · The Pieces and How They Move	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Chess — "Let's Play Chess" (beginner primer) (corpus doc 171)	a The King q · USCF IS YOUR CONNECTION TO THE CHESS COMMUNITY.	p.2	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Chess — "Let's Play Chess" (beginner primer) (corpus doc 171)	Getting Better · CASTLING	p.1	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Chess — "Let's Play Chess" (beginner primer) (corpus doc 171)	EN PASSANT · About Check and Checkmate · Let's Play Chess	p.1	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 168 ms · first delta 1743 ms · total 6058 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 0 ms · retrieval 168 ms · ask 5888 ms · gateway work 6058 ms · total 6058 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2454
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 579
tok/sec: 135.3 tok/sec — 579 output tokens in 4.279 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 46s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 5s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
stream path: streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog: first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture: both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.

disposition

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered): answered — no abstain rationale applies

setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render

decision: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 90), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.