How to Set Up a Chessboard

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Fritz Gaspard, chess teacher at Chess In The Schools In New York City. How to set up a chess board. Before you start playing you need to know exactly where the pieces belong. And one of the problems that beginners typically have is forgetting actually where to place the pieces to start a game. So I've already placed the pieces for black to start the game and I'm going to place the pieces for white on the board. In this case they are red so that you can see them better on this board. The one thing to remember when you start is that the square at your right hand should be a white square. So when you're seated facing the board, the square that you can touch with your right hand on the outside should be white. The term to remember is light on the right. O.k., so let's place the pieces on the far outside, the rooks. There's a rook on H one, and the other rook belongs on A one. The towers are on the very outside of our chess kingdom. The knights are just inside the rooks, on B one and on G one. And just inside the knights we have the bishops. There a bishop on F one and a bishop on C one. And now the tricky part is remembering where the king belongs and where the queen belongs. Basically the queen goes on her color. The white queen goes on the white square and the black queen goes on a dark square. And the king goes right next to it. So if you look over to the other side you may realize that it's a mirror image. And now we place the pawns, this is the easiest part. Pawns right in front of all of the other pieces. And you have eight pawns that go on the board and you're all set up."