Know Your Chess Board

Sharpen your game by learning the parts of the chess board.

What We’ll Cover

Parts of the board
White on right
Board Setup

Why it Matters

Knowing what makes up a chess board helps you make stronger attacks, keep your King safe, and talk about your games.

If you don’t know this stuff, this is how you sound, “Yeah, so I moved my piece here. Then here…and then I took this piece and did this…”

Doesn’t sound like that person knows what they’re doing, right? Wouldn’t you much rather say, “Queen took on h8 and checkmated.”?

You’ll soon know how to speak like the awesome chess player you are.

Parts of the Board

the parts of a chess board — Chess boards are made of 5 main parts.
Let’s look at each in a bit more detail.

**Files**
Files are the vertical lines on the chess board. There are a total of 8 files and they are lettered “a” through “h” when looking at the board from white’s position.

**Ranks**

Ranks are the horizontal lines on the chess board. There are eight total and are numbered 1 through 8 from white’s view.

**Coordinate**

A coordinate is the combination of a file and a rank and is how we identify individual squares.
The file letter always goes first and is written lowercase (this will help you later when you learn notation).
This square is e4 because it’s in the “e” file on the fourth rank.

**Diagonals**

Diagonals are the slants on the chess board. They can be as big as eight squares or as small as two.
You’ll likely never be asked to name one, but they’re labeled using their starting and ending coordinate.
For example, the larger diagonal in the picture is the a1 to h8 diagonal.

**The Center**

The center refers to the 4 squares in the middle of the board. Namely d4, d5, e4, and e5.
Having your pieces attacking and occupying these squares is a major chess theme called “center control”.

Next up.
**White on Right**

“White on right” or “light on right” is a reminder to check to make sure the board is set up correctly before starting your games.
There should be a light square at the bottom right hand corner for both white and black as they look at their board.
If there’s not one, the board has been set up incorrectly.

How to Set the Board Up

Board setup in 4 steps.

Rook, Knight, Bishop.
From the back edges of the board towards the center, the order will be Rook, Knight, Bishop.
Queen on her color.
If you have a white Queen, it will go on the center light square. A black Queen will go on the center dark square.
King on empty back square.
The King will take the last empty back square.
Pawns in front
You’ll place all eight pawns in front of your pieces.

Action Steps

Set up a chess board.
Set up a board! You can use a physical board or a free board editor on chess.com or lichess to manually set one up.
Point to 5 random squares on a chess board and say the coordinate out loud.

Wrap Up

And just like that you know about the chess board! You’re one step closer to your chess goals.

Combining your knowledge of the board with how pieces move raises your awareness of strong lines you can place your pieces on. It also makes you more aware of attacks coming from your opponent, protecting you from threats.