Every game of chess starts with the same board setup. Every piece on the board has a location it starts at and then the pieces can move accordingly from that spot. For now we will focus on how to setup the board and focus on what the pieces do later. The chess board is divided into 64 squares by using an 8x8 grid. Along the horizontal that the players play on the squares are labeled A-H and along the vertical the squares are labeled 1-8. So every square has a coordinate denoted with a letter first and then a number. So in the board below the red square would be denoted as C4.
When setting up the board it is important to know where each piece goes. Each player has 8 pawn and the pawns go along the 2 row and the 7 row. This can be seen in the picture below.
Behind the row of pawns we put what are known as power pieces. They consist of the bishops, knights, rooks, queen, and king. The picture below will show how the bishops are placed.
Another important power piece is the knight. The picture below shows how the knights are setup and as you can see they go on the outside of each bishop.
The last power piece that you have two of is the rook(castle). The castle is placed at the edge of the board just outside the starting location of the Knights. This can be seen in the picture below.
The king is one of the most important pieces and is what the game revolves around. The king is placed in the center of the back row on the opposite color of whatever side you are. This can be seen below with the white king being on a black square.
The queen is the last power piece and is the most valuable and strong. The queen is placed in the center of the back row on the whatever color the queen is. The easy way to remember this is that the queen goes on her own color.
After all of your pieces are in the correct locations this is what the board will ultimately look like.
