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Chess was discovered many years ago and since then it has been a popular game on board. In fact so high is its popularity that it is considered as the king of all the board games. People of all age groups and from around the world are attracted to it. It's a captivating and fascinating game because it gives the player an opportunity to put his technique, inspiration and experience into it.

Chess is an enjoyable game and along with that it can also increase your intellect as it is known to perk up your creativeness, judgment and analytical thinking. Chess was considered as the game of courtiers however things have changed and it is now played and enjoyed by everyone. Nikola Tesla, Napoleon, Einstein and Charlie Chaplin were few eminent personalities who were known for their skills in chess.

You need a chessboard and chess pieces to start with the game. However you need nothing in case you wish to play online. Basically you need to catch the King of the enemy. The chessboard measures 8x8 and it contains white and black squares which alternate with each other. There are 32 chess pieces out of which 16 are white and 16 are black. One player will have all the white pieces and will be known as WHITE while the other who gets the black pieces will be known as the BLACK. Each of the 16 pieces contains one King, one Queen, 2 Bishops, 2 Rooks, 2 Knights and 8 Pawns.

The position of each piece is predefined. All the pieces are thus placed in their respective positions at the start of the game. Each player will put all his 16 pieces in two rows of the board which are closest to him. The pawns will be placed on the innermost rank of the two. The remaining pieces will be put in the outermost rank in the following sequence from left to right for WHITE and in the opposite direction for BLACK: [Rook, Knight, Bishop, Queen, King, Bishop, Knight, and Rook]

A notion has been designed to help in the descriptions of chess positions. This notion is called as the algebraic chess notation. A descriptive notation was used earlier but it has become obsolete now. This notion helps in identifying the squares and pieces on the chess board. This is how it works: if we take from WHITE's viewpoint then the file to the extreme left is known as "a", the next one is "b" and this goes on till the rightmost file is reached which is named "h". The closest rank to WHITE is known as the first rank or "rank 1". Next one is "rank 2" and this continues till "rank 8" is reached which is closest to BLACK.

Identification of square becomes easy after the ranks and files are named. It can be identified by looking at the file and rank to which it belongs. So if we see from WHITE's viewpoint, "al" is the bottom left square as it belongs to file "a" and "rank 1". The next square is "b1"and "a2" is just above it. Initial position can thus be rotated with the help of chess notation: "a2" is where the white pawns are placed through "h2" whereas the black pawns are placed through "h7" on squares "a7". The white occupy "a1" and "h1" whereas the black ones are one "a8" and "h8". The white knights occupy "b1" and "g1" and the black ones "b8" and "g8"; the white bishops are located on "c1" and "f1" and the black ones on "c8" and "f8". The white queen occupies "d1" and black queen "d8". The white king occupies "e1" and black king "e8". The chessboard should be placed in such a way that the "a1" square is black!