Learning the chesboard

Let's start with the basics... Chess is a game played by 2 players, both of them controlling 16 pieces each. The players' calculation, memory and strategy skills will determine who the winner of this war is. The battlefield that this 'war' takes place is called a chessboard. It has 64 alternate color squares (usually black and white). The goal of the game is to checkmate your opponent's king. I will explain what that means in detail later. For now we are going to focus on the chess board and how to talk about it.

This is a chessboard. See the letters? They represent the files. For example when we are talking about the a- file these are the squares we are referring to

The numbers represent the ranks, so when we are talking about the fifth rank, we are referring to these squares

Understood? good. So remember the Letters represent the files and the Numbers represent the ranks!

Now, you might ask me what if I do not want to be so general and I want to talk about a specific square out of the 64. Well... it is the same as the coordinates system. We say the letter and then the number that square belongs to. For example the g6 square is this one

Remember! The letter always goes first.

Except from horizontal and vertical lines, we also have the diagonals. To talk about a diagonal, we use the first and last squares to mark it The squares between the first and the last squares are within that diagonal. For example the h1- a8 or the a8- h1 diagonal (that also happens to be the largest diagonal in chess along with the a1- h8 or h8-a1 diagonal) is the following.

Also note that the squares that a diagonal contains always have the same color.

That's all you need to know about the chessboard itself. I hope you found this post useful and that you will continue following this blog as more useful lessons are coming :)