So a few people in my club are supposed to teach some newbies the basics of chess. My teacher says that the first thing that we should teach them is that there are 64 squares on the chessboard. Has anyone actually found that information useful in chess? I never really think about it, but maybe there's something else to it.

You need to know about the feild of battle just as u need to know how th peices move on it Also it helps them understand center control

Yes, having an understanding of the board is very important.  You understand that your "world" of battle is only so big, and that makes controlling the center so much more important.  It is like one of those lessons in life that takes a bit of time to truly understand the importance of. 

With an 8x8 board, take the white knights from a1 and g1 to c3 and f3 and look at the impact they have on the board - they cover so much area.

In shorter words, it is important to understand boundaries in life - otherwise you fall off the cliff :-)

yes it becomes important when you reach the endgame and look at sqaring off the board.

on the other hand they could have metaphorical intentions to show the limits within which you must work.

TheSilentKiller wrote:

Yea doesnt matter to me i still crush people wirth my 2200 rating

 

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I was asking because I didn't know why it was important. I didn't mean to hurt your wittle feelings ;_;

I have seen several things about this and, contrary to the initial reaction that it is 'obvious', it does help to think about the board geometry and the way the pieces move on it.  You can see various ideas most clearly in endgames, but the underlying ideas are always there.

Consider how a computer sees a piece on the board.  The computer sees the squares that the piece controls, centred at the middle of the square the piece stands on, not the physical Knight or whatever that we look at.

There are several consequences to this, one of which is that a piece doesnt control the square it stands on, but will do if it moves. 

Another is the way a King in a endgame can cover more ground than you would think by moving diagonally up the board rather than straight up. 

Another one is the way a Knight moves. We are taught early on that Knights are the only pieces that can 'jump' other pieces.  In fact, they slide from (the centre of) their current square to (the centre of) their destination square between (the centres of) two other squares, thereby avoiding any other pieces which occupy (the centres of) those two squares.  This not only explains why Knights 'jump', but can also help you to visualise Knight moves more easily (i.e. in straight lines) than trying to imagine them leaping around all over the place.  Technically, the Knight is a 'root 5 leaper', its travel distance being the square root of 5 multiplied by the length of the edge of the square on the board.  There are other 'leapers' which are not used in chess but in chess variants.  Someone correct me if I am wrong, but I seem to recall a 'root 9 leaper' is called a giraffe in fairey chess ?

There are actually 204 squares in the chessboard, including all sizes.

We are talking about 2 player boards here. Well I allways knew there was 64 squars on the board because 8 rows of 8 make 64, but it's not so much important really and my rating is 1513. Defence is very important, a player with poor defence skills will allways lose.

people should learn basic math before they learn chess...

Charlie91 wrote: There are actually 204 squares in the chessboard, including all sizes.

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I get what ur saying. Theres 64 squares and 204 square roots?

No, just by itself I don't think it's important at all.  It sounds like a typical teacher ploy:  if you state a fact about something, everyone will assume you know what you're talking about (no matter how irrelevant or insignicant that fact may be).

mxdplay4 --> "Another one is the way a Knight moves. We are taught early on that Knights are the only pieces that can 'jump' other pieces.  In fact, they slide from (the centre of) their current square to (the centre of) their destination square between (the centres of) two other squares, thereby avoiding any other pieces which occupy (the centres of) those two squares.  This not only explains why Knights 'jump', but can also help you to visualise Knight moves more easily (i.e. in straight lines) than trying to imagine them leaping around all over the place."

Wow, I like that for visualization!  Learn something new every day.  Thanks, Max.

There are only 62 squares noob...

mxdplay4 wrote:

There are several consequences to this, one of which is that a piece doesnt control the square it stands on, but will do if it moves. 

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 Pawns excluded, of course.

C_Evzpa wrote: There are only 62 squares noob...

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moron