Set Up and Pieces

The Title of the Troop

Each of our chess pieces has a particular name. By clicking the image below you'll learn the 6 different names of the chess troops - Pawn, Knight, Bishop, Rook, Queen and King!

The Number of Combatants

If you click the image below you'll see the total number of pieces players have at the beginnng of the game.

Each player will start with 16 total pieces. Amongst these 16 pieces players will have 8 Pawns, 2 Rooks, 2 Knights, 2 Bishops, 1 Queen and 1 King.

Because of the rules of chess a player may only possess 1 King during the entire game, however a player may acquire addition Rooks, Knights, Bishops or Queens by promoting a Pawn!

However, because Pawns must be promoted into a new piece or troop type the maximum number of Pawns a player can have during a game is 8!

How To Set Up

Setting up the board correctly is very important. In the video below you will learn about how to correctly set up a chessboard.

Some important things to note.....

First, when positioning the board the lowest right square should be a white/light square.

Secondly, and probably the biggest source of chess confusion - the light/White Queen should go on a light square and the dark/Black should be placed on a dark square to begin the game.

A Sense of Perspective

Because pieces will be placed directly across from one another when setting up the board, the initial set up will actually look a bit different for Black and White!

In this video you'll see how the set up differs for Black and White. For example, at the start of the game White's King will be to the Right of their King, whereas from Black's perspective their King will be to the left of their Queen!

The Beautiful Board!

As shown above, chess is played on a chessboard (yeah, duh!). We will be soon uploading lessons about the board, it's squares and some of it's more unusual properties, but in the meantime look below to learn the rules of chess.