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You may like to think of the chessboard as a battleground, or perhaps as an artist's canvas on which you will create great masterpieces. Whatever your vision, you need to become familiar with each of the squares. You will find, with more experienece, that the squares nearest the middle of the board are often the location of the most interesting action.
The chessboard is divided into sixty-four squares (8x8) of alternating colour, which is very similar to that used in draughts (checkers). No matter what the true colour of the board (which come in a wide variety of colours), the (thirty-two) lighter coloured squares are called 'white', and the (thirty-two) darker coloured squares are called 'black'.
The Chessboard's 64 squares
The board must be placed so that on the first row, each player's right-hand corner square is white. The nature of the game is not changed if the board is placed the other way, but the laws of chess lay down this convention. A popular phrase used to remember the setup, often heard in beginner's clubs, is 'white on right'.
There are three important and obvious types of straight lines on the board:
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'Files' run up and down the board. There are eight 'files', each of eight squares. We have highlighted the 3rd 'file' on this board. |
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'Ranks' run across the board. There are eight 'ranks', each row has eight squares. Here we have highlighted the 4th 'rank' up. |
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And the diagonals, lines of squares of the same colour, running 45 degree angles to the 'ranks' and 'files'. Two diagonals are highlighted in this example. |
What are those numbers and letters next to the squares all about, I hear you ask? Well, they are very important, so I suppose we better tell you about them...
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