The Pieces

   

 A game of chess has 2 players: White and Black. Conventionally, White always starts out first.

Other than the obvious 'first move advantage', both sides have equal number of equal kinds of pieces.

What are these 'kinds of pieces'?

Chess has 6 types of pieces, each with a unique ability:

The King (K):

Easily the most important piece on the chessboard. The objective of each player is to avoid losing his king (checkmate) , while trying to checkmate his opponent.

The Queen (Q):

The most powerful piece in the game, with a variety of abilities.

The Bishop (B):

The only piece in the game that can move in only one color of square, that is, light or dark squares, per instance of the piece.

The Knight (N):

The trickiest piece in the game and the only piece which is able to jump over other pieces.

The Rook (R):

The other piece needed to perform castling.

The Pawn(P):

The weakest piece on the board by itself, but there are 8 per side on the board.

This is the standard piece setup:

The white pieces occupy the first rank(8th from blacks point of view), and the 8 white pawns occupy the 2nd rank(7th from blacks point of view).

Similarly blacks pieces occupy the 8th rank and the black pawns on the 7th rank.

 

The pieces for white are arranged from the left as follows:

-Rook

-Knight

-Bishop

-Queen

-King

-Bishop

-Knight

-Rook

For blacks pieces, the exact same order is used, but starting from the RIGHT.

A few tricks to help setup the board faster:

-''Right is white'' (On white's side, the right corner square is white)

This will help recognizing white's side of the board faster,

-The Queen goes on the same colored square as you are. That is, White's Queen goes on a white square(d1), and Black's Queen goes on a black square (d8)

Additional Tip: Practice setting up the board a couple of time to get the hang of it.

That's about it for the pieces! Up next: The King