Memorizing Coordinates

I visualize where the square is on the whole board and then see where it is one of the four corner quadrants of 4x4 squares. Since each of these is a mini-board with black in the bottom left corner (and each of these consists of four 2x2 groups of square with black in the corner), it is easy (or easier) to picture what colour the square is. This method doesn't require any memorization.

If you spend any time commuting, try asking yourself questions such as:

what color is square d4?

What diagonals is d4 on?

Can a knight on d4 get to f2 in 3 moves?

Can a bishop on d4 get to e8?

and so on.

Just pick random squares, and get a set of questions to ask yourself.

Also, spend time with an empty board just getting to know it. I know it sounds crazy but it helps.

I wrote my own program to do some of these tests. You need Python 3.2+ and pygame to run it. It's really basic at the moment, but I hope to keep working on it. Currently it has four tests: color of square, are two squares on the same diagonal, are two squares the same color, and knight's tour. I hope to add more tests and eventually solitaire chess. More details and a link to the source code are on WordPress.

You can divide the board in two parts...

Any fifth rank square is the same as the first rank in color

So just remembering the first rank should eliminate the fifth

And sense you have the first ranked memorized you know that the second rank are all opposite in color so the six rank will be also

And so on...That would help with the visual

You can also apply a number to the letters i.e. (a=1 b=2 c=3 etc.)...Take that number and add it to the number square i.e.(c5 =3+5=8) which equals an even number so the color would be black

conclusion...All odd numbers are white and even are black

Notate your games! Easy fix, I've done it so much I can now play blindfolded!

Or four identical quadrants.

Here's a simpleton's advice.  Use the clockwise direction to help.  You start with white - that's easy to remember.  Next is black, then white, then black.  This gives you all the corner squares.  Diagonals, files, ranks follow from this base.  What do you think?

I should have been more clear, sorry.  I am talking about discerning which outside corner squares have which color, starting with the top left, which is white.  Since in chess we start with the white pieces, that is easy to remember.  Then we go clockwise around the board noticing that the outside corner squares alternate in color: white, black, white, black.  Connecting diagonals must be of matching color.  This gives you at least a framework.  

What I do not have is a way to know for sure what the shortest number of moves is for, say, a night at e2 to arrive at h8.  I do have Reuben Fine's Basic Chess endings but although the answer might be buried in there somewhere, I don't know how to find it.  Any ideas?  

Thanks everyone, you're all brilliant.

- Michael

cofresi,

I have two things for you that might help.  Personally I don't have access to a database of 12 move games, but I did find www.johnpratt.com with short games like Kostic's Trap.  John Pratt mentioned a text that might help others, too, Irving Chernev's 1000 Best Short Games of Chess.

  I don't know how to use the chess.com database to weed out games by number of moves, do you?  Could you share with a rookie?

Thanks!

check out lichess.org, there's a special coordinate-training...

I find myself using coordinates for fluidly as white.  As soon as I am black and everything is backwards I get lost lol.  These tips are good.  Good topic.

Hello everyone I noticed something else about coordinates which makes it very easy to guess colors that i never saw anywhere before :

To remember which are the odd file letters (a, c, e, g ) i noticed those letters are "small", that means they don't have an upper vertical bar when written in lower case, whereas even file letters (b, d, f, h) have an upper part in lower case, let's call them "high" letters.

So just by looking at the form of letter, i can see diretly if it's an odd or even letter : high letter = even, small letter = odd.

Then i apply the "color rule" :  

BLACK = odd_letter + odd_number (or  even-even )

WHITE = odd_letter + even_number  (or vice versa)

for example a8 = odd + even = white.

This method can help people who never remember (i mean very quickly) which are odd or even letters.

Thanks, this is very easy way to remember the colors.

 https://www.chess.com/vision

Can mnemonics for square colours (like the one above) ever be as good as 'seeing' them with the mind's eye? Are mnemonics a stepping stone to true visualization or a substitute?

Just play and study. Focus on the CHESS and stop worrying un-necessarily about less fundamental things.  With experience the geometry of the board will become intimately familiar and your problem will go away.

Old thread but still an on-going need for many players, so I'm sharing this online training tool which I found pretty useful myself: https://en.lichess.org/training/coordinate

odd + odd = dark

even + even = dark

a, c, e, g are odd letters

b, d, f, h are even

even + odd = light

g5 dark

d5 light

even + even = dark