Your first task is to understand the chess board in First Position, that is to say, when the pieces are set up for the game but no move has been made. It appears as so:

The two things to notice about the chess board at rest are the position of the pieces and the position of each square.

The board itself is placed so that a light-colored square is in the lower right hand corner of the board. Each side places eight pawns along the second-to-last row on his or her respective side of the board. Behind that row of defense, on the last row, from left to right, each player places a Rook, a Knight, a Bishop, the Queen for the light player and the King for the dark, then the remaining Queen or King, then a Bishop, a Knight, and a Rook.

There are letters across one side of the board and numbers across a perpendicular side. Each square has a corresponding letter/number combination combination (A3, D7, etc.). It is of great value to the beginner to memorize the board's letter/number combinations and the corresponding board positions. This is the language of chess notation, the way in which games are recorded. It is extremely difficult to understand complicated commentary on the game if one must continually refer to a rendering of the grid, just as a sophisticated conversation in a foreign language is difficult if one must continually refer to a vocabulary book. Fortunately, learning the language of chess notation is much simpler than learning a foreign language. Still, it does require effort and practice and time, but consider this a preparation for the work is lies ahead of you in learning, then perfecting, your personal chess technique.