Setting up a chess board correctly

Two rules settle every argument about a chess board. One is about the board, one is about the queen, and between them they place all thirty two pieces without anybody having to remember a diagram.

Two rules settle it
32 pieces
White moves first

A chess board is eight squares by eight, alternating light and dark, and it has a right way up. Turn it a quarter turn and every diagonal in the game changes colour, which is why the first rule exists.

Rule one: light square on the right

Sit down at the board and look at the corner nearest your right hand. It must be a light square. That is true for both players at once, which is the neat part: if it is light on your right it is light on your opponent's right too.

Say it out loud once and it sticks: light on right. Every diagram in every chess book is drawn that way, so a board set up the other way round makes every position you ever read harder to follow.

The board, the right way up

The starting position, seen from White's side. The corner square h1, bottom right, is light. So is a8, top left.

Rule two: the queen goes on her own colour

White's queen starts on d1, a light square. Black's queen starts on d8, a dark square. White queen on white, black queen on black. The king takes the square next to her, on e1 and e8, which means the two kings and the two queens all face each other down their own file.

This is the rule that catches people, because the king and queen are the two pieces whose squares are not obvious from the shape of the board. Everything else is symmetrical and it does not matter which rook or which knight goes where.

What it looks like when it is wrong

The same board with the king and queen swapped, which is the commonest setup error there is. The white queen is on the dark square e1 and the king is on the light square d1. Both are wrong, and castling will feel strange for the rest of the game.

The back rank, from the outside in

Corners: the two rooks, on a1 and h1.
Beside them: the knights, on b1 and g1.
Beside those: the bishops, on c1 and f1.
The middle two: queen on her colour, king on the other one.
The whole second rank: eight pawns, a2 to h2.
Black mirrors it exactly, so the pieces stand opposite their opposite numbers: rook faces rook, king faces king.

White moves first, always

There is no toss for it once the pieces are down. White has the first move in every game of chess ever played, which is worth a small but real advantage, and in a tournament the colours alternate between rounds so that everybody gets their share of it.

If you are playing at home, the usual method is one player hides a pawn of each colour in their fists and the other picks a hand.

Coordinates, and why they are on the diagrams

Files are the columns and are lettered a to h, left to right from White's side. Ranks are the rows and are numbered 1 to 8, starting at White's end. Every square is a letter and a number, which is how e4 means one specific square out of sixty four. Chess notation is built out of nothing but that.

Questions people ask

Which side does the queen go on in chess?

On her own colour. The white queen starts on d1, which is a light square, and the black queen starts on d8, which is a dark one. The king goes beside her on e1 or e8. If you have set the board up with a light square on your right and put the queen on her own colour, everything else on the back rank is symmetrical and cannot go wrong.

Does the king go on the left or the right?

It depends on your colour, which is why it is easier to remember the queen's rule instead. From White's side of the board the king is to the right of the queen, on e1. From Black's side the king is to the left of the queen, on e8. The two kings still end up facing each other on the e-file.

Does it matter if the board is the wrong way round?

The game still works, because the rules do not know which way the board is facing. What breaks is everything written about chess. Castling kingside would put your king on the queenside, every diagram you read would be mirrored, and the colour of the squares your bishops live on would be reversed compared with every book. Fix it before you start.

Board setup sits under How the pieces move in the reference. Nearby: