Dave Schloss - Chess 101: Everything a New Chess Player Needs to Know!

The board and pieces

Every chessboard is comprised of 64 squares, which are divided into eight vertical files and eight horizontal ranks. In other words, every vertical column is a file and every horizontal row is a rank. Some boards have coordinates printed on them, so you can easily identify the files and ranks. On these, the letters a-h run horizontally and the numbers 1-8 run vertically. Please see Exhibit 1 for an example.

Exhibit 1 Chessboard with coordinates

While learning the game, I recommend that you buy an inexpensive chessboard with the rank and file coordinates printed on it, as shown in Exhibit 1. You can buy a vinyl roll-up board at many chess supply Web sites for less than $10.

I also recommend getting pieces with the Staunton design, which are the type used in standard chess sets. Exhibit 2 is example of what these pieces look like.

Exhibit 2 Staunton chess pieces

Its best to avoid chess sets that have pieces that look like people, blocks of stone or other non-standard shapes. I believe its important to learn on the type of chess set you would use in clubs and/or tournaments.

Setting up the board

Theres really only one correct way to position the board if youre going to be taking notation (writing down the moves of the game). Ill be discussing chess notation in a later chapter.

As you lay the board out in front of you, always make sure theres a light-colored square in the bottom right-hand corner. An easy way to remember this is to think, light, right. If youre not going to be taking notation, this is all you have to know about the board. If youll be writing down your moves, however, as you would be required to do in any U.S. Chess Federation (USCF) tournament event, then the board needs to be positioned as follows:

If youre playing the white pieces, you should position the board so that the letter a is in the bottom left-hand corner. If youre playing the black pieces, you should position the board so that the letter h is in the bottom left-hand corner. Either way, youll always have a light-colored square in the bottom right corner.

You can refer to Exhibit 1 again to see what this looks like. If you were setting up the board as its positioned in Exhibit 1, you would be playing the white pieces. Again, you can tell this because the letter a is in the left-hand corner. Having the letters in the correct place is important for chess notation, as you will see later.

For this exercise, as well as for many of the other exercises to follow, you should have the actual board and pieces in front of you. I also recommend that you view Exhibit 3 as we proceed so you can see how the board looks when its set up correctly.

Exhibit 3

Setting up the board

Each player has eight pawns . These are the smallest of all the pieces and should be lined up on the second rank (horizontal row), on squares a2, b2, c2 and on through h2. These also appear on the other side, on squares a7, b7, c7 through h7.

Next, each player has two rooks , which look like and are sometimes called castles. They should be set up in the corners, on squares a1 and h1, and on the other side on squares a8 and h8.

The next pieces are the knights , which are shaped like horses and should be placed next to the rooks on squares b1 and g1, and on the other side on squares b8 and g8.

The next pieces are the bishops , which are pointy and sit next to the knights on squares c1 and f1, and on the other side on squares c8 and f8.

Lastly, we need to place the king and queen . They look quite similar but the king is taller and usually has a cross on top. The queen is always placed on color, meaning the white queen always starts on a light square and the black queen always starts on a dark square. Therefore, the white queen would be placed on square d1 and the black queen would be placed on square d8 to start the game. Once you know that, its easy to remember where to put the king, because its always placed next to the queen. That puts the white king on square e1 and the black king on square e8.

If you set up the board correctly and were to draw an imaginary line between the queen and king vertically across the board, you would see a queenside as well as a kingside. The queenside consists of four pawns and a queens bishop, knight and rook. The king has the same on his side; four pawns and a kings bishop, knight and rook.