Part I: The Basics

1 Chess board

The chess board, consisting of 64 squares, half of the squares are light while half others are black. The lines in vertical often are called files. The lines in horizontal often are called ranks. And the lines that cut diagonally through the board are called diagonals. When setting up the board, keep in mind that a light square should be in the lower right corner. When starting the game, white always have the first move.

2 Chess board Notation

There are some notations used in chess. These notations are used when we talk about the movement in chess. One of these notations is called algebraic notation. There're two types of algebraic notations, the long and the short type. In this tutorial, to make the explainations easy, we'll be using the short type. In algebraic notation, the point of view is taken from the white positions. The vertical column on chess board, from left to right are lettered from A to H. The horizontal column, from bottom to top are numbered from 1 to 8. For example the lower left corner of white positions is A1 and the lower right corner is H1.

3 Chess pieces

The chess pieces consisting of the pawn, bishop, knight, queen, rook and the king. They have their own values, the higher the values, the worthier the piece. These values are often considered when we have several decisions in the game. For example will you sacrifice a pawn than a rook? By knowing the values we can take a quick decision.

• The pawn

This is the weakest piece in the chess board and the value is 1, and totally 8 pawns on the board. In the early game, the pawns are placed in the 2 rank

• The bishop
  

The bishop value is 3. You can say it is equal to 3 pawns. There are 2 pieces for the bishop, they are placed on the 3rd column from both the left and right of the board

• The knight
  

The knight value is 3. The value is equal to the bishop you say? Yes, you’re right. The bishop and the knight often used as supporting pieces in the game. Some player value the bishop more than the knight for example 3.5 while others value the knight more than the bishop. It depends on the player playing style. There are 2 pieces for the knight, they are placed on the 2nd column from both the left and right of the board.

• The rook
  

The rook value is 5. It equals to 5 pawns. There are 2 pieces for the rook, they are placed on the left most and right most of the board.

• The queen
  

The queen value is 9. This is because the queen role is equal to the combination of the bishop and the rook

• The king
  

The king actually doesn’t have any value. But even it’s not powerful, it cannot be lost. When you lost the king (actually it never happens), you lost the game