The Chess Setup
The Chessboard consists of 64 light and dark squares, while each player starts the game with a light (normally white) square on the bottom-right corner in from of them. The White player places their pieces on the rows (called “Files”) in front of them that are marked by letters ranging from a to h from left to right. The columns (called “Ranks”) are marked by numbers ranging from 1 to 8 from bottom to top.
♔ ♕ The King and Queen
“The King and Queen stand in the middle because they are the most significant pieces in the game! The King is the most important and the Queen is the most powerful. Both the King and the Queen want to stand on their own color, but the King is a gentleman and he invites the Queen to stand on her own color”.
The White Queen stands on the Center-White Square with the White King next to her on the Center-Black square, while the Black King and Queen do the opposite across from them so that the King and Queen on each side are facing the other player’s King and Queen.
♖Rooks
“The Rooks are the guardians of the Kingdom! When the enemy tries to attack, they fire their arrows! That’s why the Rooks stand at the corners: so that between them they have a view of the entire area”.
The two Rooks stand on the very bottom corners of the board.
♗Bishops
“All the pieces wanted the honor of standing next to the King and Queen, so the King announced there would be a competition—a race! Whichever piece was quickest would win, because the King and Queen needed the best messengers to deliver packages all over the kingdom. Do you know who won? The Bishops!”
The two Bishops stand guard on either side of the King and Queen.
♘Knights
“The Knights are the cleverest pieces in the kingdom. They know how to jump over pieces, so they jumped over everyone else and took their place next to the Bishops.”
The Two Knights then stand on the remaining side of each of the Bishops.
♙Pawns
“The Pawns might be small, but they are a powerful team! Why do you think they stand on the second Rank? So they can protect their parents: the King and Queen, and so the King and Queen can always see them. The Pawns aren’t allowed to move backwards, because they aren’t ready to make such decisions. But let’s see what happens when they grow up and get big!”
All eight of the Pawns cover every square on the second row (File) on the board in front of each player.
The second level in the bonus Space World level of our App you can learn about the placement of the pieces and quiz yourself on your ability to set them up correctly in the fastest way possible.
Below are downloadable PDF Worksheets so that you can start practicing yourCheckMate.
