Every game starts from the same position, and getting it right takes about a minute once you know three rules: light square on the right, rooks in the corners, queen on her own colour. Here they are one at a time, building the position from an empty board.
Which way round
The board is eight squares by eight, alternating light and dark. Turn it so each player has a light square in their right-hand corner. Players say it as a rhyme: light on the right.
It matters more than it looks. Turned the wrong way, the king and queen end up on each other's squares, and castling no longer works the way it should.
The back row
The pieces fill the row nearest each player, mirrored so that each one faces its opposite number across the board. Start from the edges and work in.
Those last two squares take the queen and the king. The queen goes on her own colour: the white queen on the light square, d1, and the black queen on the dark one, d8. The king takes the square that's left, so the two kings face each other on the e-file, as do the two queens on the d-file.
The pawns
Each side has eight pawns, and they fill the row in front of the pieces: the second rank for White, the seventh for Black.
Who moves first
White always moves first, and then the players take turns, one move each. Between friends, you can toss a coin for colours or hide a pawn of each colour in your fists and let the other player pick a hand.
A quick check
Before the first move, run your eye over these:
- A light square in each player's right-hand corner.
- Rook, knight, bishop from each corner inwards.
- White's queen on a light square, Black's on a dark one, both on the d-file.
- Kings on the e-file, facing each other.
- Eight pawns each, on the row in front.
The two mistakes nearly everyone makes once are a board turned the wrong way and the king and queen swapped. The checks above catch both.