Wizard's Chess

From Harry Potter Wiki

Harry Potter and Ron Weasley enjoy a game of Wizard's Chess.

A game of Wizard's Chess; the black Queen is seen here taking one of the white Knights.

Wizard's Chess is the magical variant of the classic board game in which the pieces move of their own accord when commanded by the player. When a piece is taken, it is destroyed by the attacking piece. Players move their pieces by speaking the name of the piece and the square it is to move to by algebraic notation. When Harry Potter began to learn how to play the game, he used Seamus Finnigan's pieces, which offered him bad advice because they knew that he was not a good player.

During the Christmas Feast, in a number of Wizard Crackers, Harry obtained, among other things, his very own Wizard's Chess set. He later broke it in by losing, once again, to Ron. (Although Harry saw this more as the fault of Ron's brother, Percy Weasley)

A Wizard's Chess set.

During 1992 a giant Wizard's Chessboard was the third-to-last layer of security for the Philosopher's Stone. Using his extensive knowledge of chess, Ron Weasley managed to get him, Harry, and Hermione Granger across, ultimately sacrificing himself to the White Queen so that Harry could checkmate the King.

Aside from the self-moving pieces, the rules of Wizard's Chess appear to be identical to those of muggle chess.

[edit] Behind the scenes

The movie depicted chess with the pieces destroying each other(presumably to be fixed with Reparo at the end of the game), but in the books the pieces simply knock each other out and drag captured pieces off the edge of the board. Ron's chess set depicted in the movie is a replica of the 12th century Lewis Chessmen.