Chess in 30 Minutes

I found a book in my Mom's old collection of strategy books that many of you are familiar with. It is E. S Lowe's 'Chess in 30 Minutes'. This book was published in 1955. Very simple to understand, I was struck by this thought. (No, it did not hurt too bad).

We can start playing chess in 30 minutes, but how long did it take the ancient chess players to learn how to be great chess players? I know that they probably grew up learning chess and it did not take long for them to learn it because chess playing was taken from many war tactics. They knew war, they knew chess.

My Mom's old Chess Book

My point is that you can begin learning chess and can play chess within 30 minutes, but it will take a life time to really learn chess strategy.

Besides learning the chess piece names, the most important aspect of playing chess is to know where to place the chess pieces once you learn their names.

Two players can play chess at a time. There are chess games for more players and you can play in teams, but for the basics, chess has room only for two players at a time.

There are 64 playing squares on a chess board. Every square will be used in the chess game.

There are 16 chessmen and traditionally they are "white" and "black." Any set that has the chess pieces identified as opposite will work just as well.

This a diagram from the book that lays out the set up. Each chess piece is identified by a character.

Chess Board Set Up

The only thing left to remember on this is that the "white" always, without exception, is the first to move. The right handed corner square on "white's" side has to be a white square.

The white side is pictured with white pieces and is at the bottom side of the picture. Notice that if you were sitting down at this chess table, the right lower most square is white. Of course it does not matter which side you will start on, as long as that right corner space is white. This prevents you from playing chess sideways.

Next - the Chess Piece names.