A full board and all thirty-two pieces to cut out — classroom-grade chess for the price of a sheet of paper, with the setup rules printed under the board.
Print the page, cut the thirty-two tiles, and you have a playable set — flat tiles work as they are, or fold a strip of scrap paper under each as a stand. Print on card stock if the set should survive more than a weekend; a second copy of the page replaces lost pawns forever.
The two classic mistakes are printed under the board because they happen every time: the board must sit with a light square in each player's right-hand corner, and the queen starts on her own colour — white queen on the light square, black on the dark. Rooks in the corners, knights beside them, bishops next, then queen and king; pawns across the second rank.
Rooks move any distance along ranks and files; bishops along diagonals; the queen does both. Knights jump in an L and are the only piece that leaps over others. Kings step one square any direction. Pawns walk forward one (two from their first move) but capture diagonally — and a pawn reaching the far rank promotes, almost always to a queen. Put the enemy king in a position it cannot escape — checkmate — and the game is over.
Castling, en passant and the finer laws are all handled by our chess game, which is the fastest way to learn them: it simply won't let you move wrong, and it plays three levels of computer when no opponent is around.
Which colour moves first? White, always.
What if we lose a piece? Print the page again — or promote a bottle cap. Paper sets are forgiving that way.