Starting position

The starting position is the standard board arrangement before the first move. There are thirty-two pieces, sixteen for White and sixteen for Black, and White moves first.

Squares are identified by a letter from a to h for the vertical file and a number from 1 to 8 for the horizontal rank. Thus, d1 means the d-file on the first rank.

How to set it up

1. Orient the board so that the corner square on each player's right is light.
2. On the first rank, from a1 to h1, White places rook, knight, bishop, queen, king, bishop, knight, and rook. White's eight pawns occupy the second rank.
3. On the eighth rank, from a8 to h8, Black places rook, knight, bishop, queen, king, bishop, knight, and rook. Black's eight pawns occupy the seventh rank.
4. The queens stand on the d-file and the kings on the e-file. A useful check is that each queen begins on a square of its own color.

The row nearest each player is that side's back rank. In this arrangement, each side has one light-squared bishop, which remains on light squares, and one dark-squared bishop, which remains on dark squares.

When a source says only “starting position,” it normally means this standard chess position. Variants such as Chess960, which changes the initial arrangement of the back-rank pieces under specific constraints, use a different setup.