Chess set

In everyday and commercial use, a chess set usually includes a board and the 32 pieces with which a game begins.

The terminology is not completely uniform, however: the glossary of the International Chess Federation, known by its French initials FIDE, uses “chess set” for the 32 pieces and treats the chessboard separately. The context therefore matters when reading a rule or product description.

• One board with 64 squares in eight horizontal rows and eight vertical columns, including 32 light squares and 32 dark squares.
• Sixteen White pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns.
• Sixteen Black pieces with the same composition.

A clock and a scoresheet, the form used to record moves, may be part of tournament equipment, but they are separate from the basic board-and-pieces equipment.

Materials, colors, and designs can vary, but the piece types should be easy to distinguish. Competitive sets commonly use the Staunton style, which gives each type a recognizable silhouette. The set is physical equipment; a position is a particular arrangement of the pieces together with other game-state information at a given moment.