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In this lesson you're going to find out all about the chessboard.
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This is the chessboard. It's a square made up of a lot of small squares. If you count them you'll see that there are eight squares going from top to bottom. There are also eight squares going from left to right. There are 64 squares in total.
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You will see that half the squares in the diagram are dark coloured. These squares we call BLACK SQUARES or DARK SQUARES. The other squares are called WHITE SQUARES or LIGHT SQUARES. It doesn't matter what colour they are on your screen - or even on your chessboard. That's what we call them.
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You will also see that the bottom right hand square is a LIGHT SQUARE. It's VERY IMPORTANT that you get this right. It's easy to remember - WHITE ON THE RIGHT. It rhymes, you see. If the square on your right is WHITE you've got it RIGHT. If the square on your right is BLACK you LACK brains!! If the square on your right is LIGHT you're still RIGHT. If the square on your right is DARK you get a BLACK MARK.
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You see the lines going across the board from left to right? These are called RANKS. Remember that word. There are EIGHT RANKS on the chessboard. We call them the FIRST RANK, the SECOND RANK, up to the EIGHTH RANK.
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The lines going from top to bottom are called FILES. Don't you ever forget it! You see that there are letters at the bottom of the board. Each FILE is named after a letter. There are EIGHT FILES on the battlefield. There's the A-FILE, the B-FILE, right the way up to the H-FILE.
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There are also lines of squares going diagonally from corner to corner. Guess what they're called. DIAGONALS! What do you notice about the squares on each DIAGONAL? Yes, they're all the same colour.
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Now look round the side of the chessboard. What do you see? That's right: letters and numbers. Can you count up to 8? Do you know your alphabet as far as h? In that case you should be OK. Now comes the hard bit. Each square has a name, made up of the LETTER of its FILE followed by the NUMBER of its RANK. So the squares in the corners are a1, a8, h1 and h8.
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That's the end of the lesson. What do you want to do now?  Do a quiz on this lesson Repeat the lesson Return to the menu |