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Achessboard is agame board used to playchess. It consists of 64 squares, 8 rows by 8 columns, on which thechess pieces are placed. It is square in shape and uses two colors of squares, one light and one dark, in a checkered pattern. During play, the board is oriented such that each player's near-right corner square is a light square.
The columns of a chessboard are known asfiles, the rows are known asranks, and the lines of adjoining same-colored squares (each running from one edge of the board to an adjacent edge) are known asdiagonals. Each square of the board is named usingalgebraic,descriptive, ornumericchess notation; algebraic notation is the FIDE standard. In algebraic notation, using White's perspective, files are labeleda throughh from left to right, and ranks are labeled1 through8 from bottom to top; each square is identified by the file and rank that it occupies. The a- through d-files constitute thequeenside, and the e- through h-files constitute thekingside; the 1st through 4th ranks constitute White's side, and the 5th through 8th ranks constitute Black's side.
 | a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | |
| 8 |  |  | | | | | | | 8 |
| 7 | | | | | | | | | 7 |
| 6 | | | | | | | | | 6 |
| 5 | | | | | | | | | 5 |
| 4 | | | | | | | | | 4 |
| 3 | | | | | | | | | 3 |
| 2 | | | | | | | | | 2 |
| 1 | | | | | | | | | 1 |
| a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | |
The earliest known ancestor of the chessboard is theAshtāpada board. Among other games, it was used to playchaturanga, a historical precursor to chess, beginning around the 6th century inIndia. The board uses a single color for all squares and is divided into eight columns by eight rows, with marked squares calledcastles in the corners of each quadrant. Unlike in Ashtāpada, castles serve no function in chaturanga.[1]
The chessboard acquired its modern checkered pattern in the 10th century with the arrival of chess in Europe.[2] This pattern was based on that of the then-5×5draughts board.[3] As a result of this change, each diagonal was now highlighted by a continuous sequence of same-colored squares, which later facilitated the introduction of the modernbishop andqueen movements in the 15th century.[4]
TheLibro de los juegos (1283) contains a description of the chessboard, describing eight rows and columns as the ideal number, deeming the practice of chess on the 10×10 board too tiresome and on the 6×6 board too quick.[5] In the 13th century, some players began using the convention that the first square of the far right column should be light-colored; this convention was endorsed byPedro Damiano at the end of the 15th century.[6]
In contemporary chess, adigital board is a chess board connected to a computer that is capable of transmitting the moves to the computer itself: the information about the moves can be used to play a game against achess engine, or simply to record the moves of a game automatically. A digital board uses sensors to detect the position of the pieces, and each piece move can be recorded.
In 1998, the33rd Chess Olympiad was held inElista. The games were digitally broadcast over the internet thanks to the introduction of digital chess boards developed byDigital Game Technology: 328 boards were used for the event.[7]
In 2003,ex-world championGarry Kasparov facedchess engineX3D Fritz in a series of four matches in avirtual environment, where the computer-generated board hovered in the air in front of Kasparov, who used special glasses. This was the first man–machine game of chess performed in a completely simulated environment.[8]
Chessboards have been made from numerous materials over the years, such asebony,ivory,marble,metal,glass, andplastic. They can also be found as decorative elements in plazas, gardens, and living rooms.
High-level games generally use wooden boards, whilevinyl,plastic, andcardboard are common for less important tournaments and matches, as well as for home use. Additionally, some very large chessboards are built into or drawn on the ground. Rarely,decorative glass and marble boards are permitted for games conducted by national or international chess federations.
Wooden boards are traditionally made of unstained woods that are light brown and dark brown in color. To reduce cost, some boards are made with veneers of more expensive woods glued to an inner piece of plywood or chipboard. A variety of color combinations are used for plastic, vinyl, and silicone boards. Common dark-light combinations are black and white, as well as brown, green or blue withbuff orcream.
For international or continental championships,FIDE's regulations state that wooden boards should be used. For other FIDE tournaments,wood,plastic, or cardboard boards may be used, and the board should be rigid in all instances. The board may also be made ofmarble, as long as there is an appropriate contrast between the light and dark squares. The finishing should be neutral or frosted but never shiny. The squares should be from 5 to 6cm in length, at least twice the diameter of apawn's base. If thetable and the board are two separate pieces, the latter must be fixed so it stays in place.[9]
| a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | ||
| 8 |  | 8 | |||||||
| 7 | 7 | ||||||||
| 6 | 6 | ||||||||
| 5 | 5 | ||||||||
| 4 | 4 | ||||||||
| 3 | 3 | ||||||||
| 2 | 2 | ||||||||
| 1 | 1 | ||||||||
| a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | ||
There are various systems for recording moves and referring to the squares of the chessboard; the standard contemporary system isalgebraic notation. In algebraic notation, the files are identified by the lettersa toh, from left to right from theWhite player's point of view, and the ranks by the numbers1 to8, with 1 being closest to the White player. Each square on the board is identified by a unique coordinate pairing, from a1 to h8.[10]
In the olderdescriptive notation, the files are labelled by the piece originally occupying its first rank (e.g. queen,king's rook,queen's bishop), and ranks by the numbers1 to8 from each player's point of view. This method is no longer commonly used. FIDE stopped using descriptive notation in 1981.
ICCF numeric notation assigns numbers to both files and ranks, with rank 1 being the one closest to the player with the white pieces. The file leftmost to the White player (a in algebraic notation andQR in descriptive notation) is file one and the rightmost to them (h in algebraic notation andKR in descriptive notation) is file eight.
Variant chessboard shapes and sizes go back to thePersian origins of the game in the 10th century, when the bookMuraj adh-dhahab (Board of the Gods) described six different variants of chess, includingcircular andcylinder chess.[11] Due to the widespread creation of new variants, a wide variety of sizes can be found.Gliński's hexagonal chess utilizes a board with 91 hexagonal spaces of three different colors. One innovation of the 13th century was thecylindrical board for use in cylinder chess.[12]
The board used for the PersianTamerlane chess is one of the first recorded variant chessboards, with eleven columns by ten rows along with two citadels. Each player has a citadel to the right of their second rank, which may be occupied by the opponent'sking, in which case that opponent may declare adraw.[13] In 1617,Pietro Carrera proposed a variant that received his name, Carrera's Chess, with a 10×8 board, later used in other variants such asCapablanca chess and Gothic Chess. Other sizes, with ten rows by ten columns, are used inOmega Chess andGrand Chess; Omega Chess has four additional squares, one in each corner of the board.Los Alamos chess uses a smaller 6×6 board.[14]
Japaneseshogi uses a board with nine columns by nine rows. The board of Chinesexianqi consists of nine columns by ten rows; here, the pieces are placed on the intersections of the lines that divide the squares, rather than within the squares themselves.[15] Each player has a 3×3 palace in the central three columns and the closest three rows, within which the player's general and advisors must stay. Between the central two rows is a river that the elephant cannot cross and past which the soldier increases in strength.[16][17] A similar board without a river is used in Koreanjanggi.
Some chess variants use more than a single board per match.Bughouse chess, for example, involves four players playing two simultaneous matches on separate boards.[18]Alice Chess is a popular variant which is usually played on two boards to facilitate the movement of pieces between the boards.[19]Three-dimensional boards are often represented by multiple two-dimensional boards. Variants may use anywhere from two to eight boards.[20] For example,Raumschach utilizes five boards of twenty-five squares each, totaling 125 squares.[20] Another noteworthy variant,Star Trek Chess, utilizes a board of sixty-four squares with movable parts divided into seven levels.[21] In the initial position, each player occupies two of the movable four-square attack boards. The white pieces start in the lower level, using attack boards connected to this level and the first two rows of the board, while the black pieces start at the top, using the attack boards and first two rows of the third level.[21]
The game of chess has beenrepresented in the arts since its creation. Chess sets usually had considerable artistic value; they were made of noble materials, such as ebony and ivory, and in large sizes. Many of the pieces in these sets were offered to churches as relics. The bookLiber miraculorum sancte Fidis tells a story in which a nobleman, after miraculously escaping from prison, is forced to carry a chessboard until a sanctuary as gesture of gratitude. More frequently, however, there are stories in which the chessboard is used as a weapon. The French tale ofOgier the Dane reports how the son ofCharlemagne brutally kills one of Ogier's sons with a chessboard after losing a match, although there is no evidence confirming the veracity of the story.[22]
In 1250, a sermon calledQuaedam moralitas de scaccario per Innocentium papum (The Innocent Morality) showed the world as being represented by a chessboard. The white and black squares represented the two conditions of life and death, or praise and censure; over these, the pieces, representing humanity, would confront each other in the adversities of the game, which symbolized life.
Due to its simple geometry, the chessboard is often used in mathematical puzzles or problems unrelated to chess, such as thewheat and chessboard problem and themutilated chessboard problem. The terminfinite chessboard is sometimes used to refer to a grid.
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