Chess

The game of Chess has a history that at all times has awakened interest but of which very little is known. We know some fables treating of the origin of the game, fables that are true to history only in so far as they lay the place of origin in Asia and the time of origin in a very distant past. Games similar to Chess have been discovered on Egyptian sculptures. Written documents, a thousand years old, referring to Chess, have been found.
Board Setup

The playing board is the battlefield of the game. It’s traditionally oriented so that each player has a white square on the corner to his or her right. The pieces are arranged on the board as shown. Note that the queen always is placed on a square of her own color.

The game is played on a chessboard, consisting of 64 squares: eight rows and eight columns. The squares are alternately light (white) and dark colored. The board must be laid down such that there is a black square in the lower-left corner. To facilitate notation of moves, all squares are given a name.

Chess Board Notation

Those that take chess pretty seriously, actually keep track of all their moves and record entire games.  In order to record moves, someone came up with the smart idea of labeling the columns with letters and the rows with numbers, thus each square is uniquely identified.  As you can see, white has a tremendous advantage because he or she doesn’t have to look at upside-down numbers and read the alphabet backwards.  One of the more important reasons to be the white or light chess players side.
About Check and Checkmate

The main goal of chess is to checkmate your opponent’s King. The King is not actually captured and removed from the board like other pieces. But if the King is attacked (”checked”) and threatened with capture, it must get out of check immediately. If there is no way to get out of check, the position is a “checkmate,” and the side that is checkmated loses.