Pin (chess) Pin (chess) In chess, a pin is a situation brought on by an attacking piece in which a defending piece cannot move without exposing a more valuable defending piece on its other side to capture by the attacking piece. Moving the attacking piece to bring on the pin is called pinning; the defending piece so restricted is described as pinned. Only pieces that can move an indefinite number of squares in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line (i.e. bishops, rooks, and queens) can pin. Kings, knights, and pawns cannot pin. Any piece can be pinned except the king, since the
History of chess theory is no longer considered tenable. In Sanskrit, "chaturanga" (चतुरङ्ग) literally means "having four limbs (or parts)" and in epic poetry often means "army" (the four parts are elephants, chariots, horsemen, foot soldiers). The name came from a battle formation mentioned in the Indian epic Mahabharata. The game chaturanga was a battle-simulation game which rendered Indian military strategy of the time. Some people formerly played chess using a die to decide which piece to move. There was an unproven theory that chess started as this dice-chess and that the gambling and dice aspects of the game were removed because of