Chess Party for a 9-year-old My 9-year-old son loves chess, and he's very good at it! For his birthday party, we had a chess theme with chessboards set up around the house for everyone to play. We had two tables for dinner: one had a white tablecloth with black plates and the other had a black tablecloth with white plates. Guests were asked to dress in black and white, too.  The decorations were drawings of chess pieces — kings, queens, knights, etc. — that we drew ourselves. We strung black and white streamers around the ceilings. The cake was a replica of a chessboard. I baked it in a large Wilton sheet pan to get the same size as a real chess board, and trimmed it to make it square. Inside, the cake itself was checkerboard, which you can create by baking two cakes, one yellow and one chocolate, and cutting out a 4-inch square center in each layer with a sharp knife leaving a two-inch edge all the way around. Put the yellow layer in the middle of the chocolate cake, and the chocolate layer in the middle of the yellow cake, and when it is sliced, it will look like a checkerboard. On top, I created the board by icing the cake and then topping with white and milk chocolate 64 squares. I melted the chocolate, spread it into a sheet, and cut 32 squares of each color. I purchased white and milk chocolate molded chess pieces from an online candy store to put on top of the squares.  In their goodie bags, the kids received magnetic travel chess sets, and different types of black and white candies.