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Your not going to get very far in chess without capturing your opponent's pieces. Captures are optional but a vital part of the game.
When a chess piece is captured, it is removed from the board and replaced by the attacking piece. Unlike draughts (checkers), multiple captures are not allowed during the same move.
In the first diagram to the left, it's white's turn to play. White could capture both of black's knights, but must choose which one to take. In second diagram, white decides to capture the knight on square "d6". This knight is removed from play and replaced by the pawn. White's move ends there, and is now black's turn of play. The captured knight does not return to play during the duration of the game.
Though all pieces move in different ways they all capture opponent's pieces by occupying the square the enemy stands. There is one except to this rule, a special pawn moved called 'En Passant'. This will be explained later in our 'Special Moves' section, so don't worry about it for the time being.
The chess pieces are often assigned certain point values that help determine how valuable a piece is strategically. Calculations of the value of pieces provide only a rough idea of the state of play. The exact piece values will depend on the game situation, and can differ considerably from those given here.
The values are derived from experience in endgames. So a rook is worth about the same as two pawns and a bishop. These values are very important as they can determine if a 'trade' of pieces would be worthwhile. For example, if a player was to capture an opponent's bishop with his pawn, knowing beforehand he would most likely lose that pawn, it can be seen from the table that a bishop is worth more so the capture has been an advantage.
Generally bishops and knight are approximately worth the same value, so it is accepted to lose a knight to capture a bishop, or vice versa.
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