How Rooks Perform Online

Rooks online are as awesome as they are on traditional chess boards. They are great for both attack and defense strategies. Because they can cover great distances on the board rooks in online chess are among the valuable pieces we must preserve as much as possible.

Using chess notation, rooks are initially located on h1 and a1 when we're playing white pieces, and a8 and h8 when we're playing black pieces. Initially, while pawns block the path of rooks, we cannot opt to move them out of formation. If we try to click on them they will stick to the arrow but will never stay on the square we want to place them on. Furthermore, an instruction will appear on screen saying we have just done an illegal move.

So what we do online is to move a pawn or two out of a rook's way to clear the path for it. We may opt for an h2-h4 to move the pawn right in front of the rook on h1 and then later do an h1-h3. But it's uncommon to want rooks out of formation early in the game. They often stay where they are until mid-play when they're often sent out of formation through a castling.

Just like on traditional boards, rooks in online chess are not allowed to jump over or bypass any other piece on the board, ally or enemy. They can travel long distance horizontally or vertically, over many squares, but are stopped by any piece that obstructs it and cannot be captured by it—like an ally piece or a supported enemy piece.

To capture online, rooks simply need to have the piece to be captured standing along their path, unsupported. If supported, rooks may also capture the enemy piece as long as we're ready to have it counter captured.

We simply click on the rook and put it over the piece we want to capture, and then click it again. For a brief moment the rook and the piece to be captured overlap, being on the same spot. But then the piece to be captured disappears afterwards.

The path the rook travelled is highlighted for a while (as in all moves made on the board) until the opponent does another move, in which case the path the enemy piece made is also highlighted. All moves are instantly notated visibly online.

Rooks in online chess are easier to handle and monitor. And they remain as deadly as ever.