The distinctive appearance of the chessboard, aside from the sixty-foursquare grid, is the alternating light and dark squares. This is so unique that any time a checkered pattern appears with contrasting light and dark colors, people automatically think of a chessboard (or checkerboard, which is really the same thing).

Has the chessboard always been checkered?

The surprising answer is no. Older versions of chess in India and the Middle East were played on a board with the grid dividing it into sixty-four squares, but without contrasting colors.

The colors of a chessboard can be whatever you like as long as they offer good contrast between the light and dark squares. The red and white of the traditional checkerboard is a bit gaudy. Better is the soft green and beige of many vinyl roll-up boards or the walnut-maple squares of some wood boards.

Using All Squares

In chess, both players use all the squares of the board. This is in contrast to the many versions of checkers, in which each player uses only half of the squares. It also gives special meaning to the appearance of the chessboard in terms of game planning. There are advanced strategies known as weak-color complexes, where a player cannot get sufficient control of the squares of one particular color. There is even a chess piece that operates on only one color, which you will learn about in the next chapter.

Preventing Visual Monotony

There is one other reason for the alternating light and dark squares on the chessboard: It prevents a visual monotony, thus helping players to quickly and accurately distinguish between the various squares on the board. To go along with this, it allows players to easily visualize the various highways that cross the board.

The squares of the chessboard do not exist in isolation. They touch or intersect at various points. Straight rows of such bordering squares are called ranks, files, and diagonals.