How many types of pieces are there in chess?

Chess is a recreational and competitive board game played between two players. It is sometimes called Western or international chess to distinguish it from related games such as xiangqi (Chinese chess or Elephant chess). The current form of the game emerged in Southern Europe during the second half of the 15th century after evolving from similar, much older games of Indian and Persian origin.

A chess piece, or chessman, is any of the six different types of movable objects used on a chessboard to play the game of chess.

Each player begins with a total of sixteen pieces. The pieces that belong to each player are distinguished by color. The lighter colored pieces are referred to as "white," and the player that owns them, "White". The darker colored pieces are referred to as "black", and the player that owns them, "Black".

In a standard game, each of the two players begins with the following sixteen pieces: 1 king, 1 queen, 2 rooks, 2 bishops, 2 knights, 8 pawns.

The characters implied by pieces' names vary between languages. For example, in many languages, the piece known in English as the "knight" frequently translates as "horse", and the English "bishop" frequently translates as "elephant".