How to Set Up a Chess Board: the Starting Position, Step by Step

Turn the board so each player has a light square in their bottom right corner. Put the rooks in the corners, the knights beside them, then the bishops. The queen goes on the square matching her own colour, the king takes the last square, and the eight pawns fill the whole row in front. Black mirrors White exactly.

Step by step

1. Orient the board. Light square, bottom right, for both players. The saying is light on right, and it is the rule that fixes most of the errors people make.
2. Rooks in the corners. a1 and h1 for White, a8 and h8 for Black.
3. Knights next to the rooks. b1 and g1.
4. Bishops next to the knights. c1 and f1.
5. Queen on her own colour. The white queen goes on the light square, d1. The black queen goes on the dark square, d8. White queen on white, black queen on black.
6. King on the last square. e1 for White, e8 for Black. The two kings face each other down the e file, and so do the two queens down the d file.
7. Pawns across the row in front. a2 to h2 for White, a7 to h7 for Black.

White moves first.

The two mistakes almost everyone makes

The board is the wrong way round. If your bottom right corner is a dark square, the whole board is rotated 90 degrees. Every piece will be on the wrong colour, castling will put the king on the wrong side, and any diagram you copy from a book will not match what is in front of you. Check the corner before you place a single piece.

The king and queen are swapped. This is the one that survives longest, because the position still looks plausible. The check is the queen, not the king: white queen on a light square, black queen on a dark one. If the queen is on her own colour, the king is right.

How to tell which piece is which

In a standard Staunton set the king is the tallest piece and wears a cross on top. The queen is next tallest and wears a coronet with points. The bishop has a rounded mitre with a diagonal slot cut in it. The knight is a horse's head. The rook is a castle turret. The pawn is the small round headed one, and there are eight of them.

If you cannot tell the king from the queen at a glance, the set is poorly proportioned. That is a real thing to check before buying, and it is covered in Staunton chess pieces explained.

Where the board sits between the players

Square to the table, with the a file on White's left. If the board is printed with algebraic notation, the letters read left to right along White's near edge, which makes the orientation obvious and is one of the reasons a board with notation is worth having while you are learning.

If you are playing with a clock, it goes on Black's side of the board by convention, though in practice the players agree.

Setting up for the second game

Swap colours. The player who had White takes Black, and the board turns round with them. This is standard in clubs and matches, and it is the fairest way to play a pair of games, because White has a small statistical advantage from moving first.

Getting it right without thinking about it

A board with notation printed around the edge removes both of the common mistakes at once: the letters tell you which way the board goes, and the coordinates let you check d1 and e1 directly instead of guessing.

Both of ours print algebraic notation on both faces of the board, which matters because the board is reversible: green and white on one side, black and white on the other, 2.25 inch squares on both.

See both sets.

Common questions

Does the queen go on the left or the right?

Neither, reliably. She goes on her own colour, which puts the white queen to the left of the white king and the black queen to the right of the black king when you look at the board from White's side.

Which corner is white on a chess board?

The bottom right corner is a light square for both players. The h1 square is light, and so is h8 from Black's side of the board.

What happens if you set the board up wrong?

If you notice before the game starts, reset it. If you notice mid-game in casual play, agree with your opponent. In rated play the arbiter decides, and the usual outcome is that the game is restarted if it is caught early.

Do the knights face any particular way?

No rule, and no advantage. Facing each other, facing forward, or facing the centre are all common, and it is pure preference.