The pieces in the game of chess are divided into white and black sets. Each set consists of 16 pieces: 1 king , 1 queen , 2 rooks , 2 knights , 2 bishops , and 8 pawns . The sets are called "White" and "Black" respectively. The game is played on a square board with 8 columns (labeled from left to right by the letters "a" to "h" from the white side) and 8 rows (labeled from the white side by the numbers 1 to 8). The 64 small squares are arranged in a sequence of light and dark colors. The square closest to each player's right hand is either light or white (depending on the color scheme of the chessboard). Thus, each player's queen piece is placed on the square corresponding to its color (the white queen on the white square, the black queen on the black square). [ 3 ]