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The touch-move rule requires that a player who touches a piece must move it. The rule is used for all serious competitions and applies only to the player who is on move. The player who is not on move may touch pieces, although this is considered bad form; a Tournament Director may penalize a player who is touching pieces to annoy or distract the opponent.

A similar rule requires that a player who releases a piece after making a legal move is considered to have made that move. A player who moves a piece to a square without releasing the piece is entitled to move that piece to a different square.

There is no penalty for a player who touches a piece which has no legal moves. At one time, the rules required the player to move the King, but this rule is obsolete.

A player who touches an opponent’s piece is required to capture it, if possible. Castling is considered a King move, and a player should touch the King before the Rook.

A transposition in chess is a sequence of moves that results in a position which may also be reached by another, more common sequence of moves. A transposition of moves usually refers to an opening, in which a given position is arrived at by a different sequence of moves. Players sometimes use transpositions deliberately in order to avoid variations they dislike, lure opponents into unfamiliar or uncomfortable territory or just worry opponents.^[1][2]

In chess the verb “transpose” means shifting the game on to a different opening track from that on which it started.

In chess, a “tempo” is a gain in time-units (represented by moves). When one player gains a tempo, it effectively means that his opponent has been forced to waste one or more moves.

A tempo is usually gained by developing a piece that attacks another of greater value, which must at once move or be lost. The benefit to the player gaining a tempo is that it enables him to marshall his forces more swiftly and effectively. In the opening part of a game, this usually results in a lead in development.