It's recursive. Probably easier to get your head around the recursive solution to the towers of hanoi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Hanoi) and then start on the Chess code!

I really don't think the recursion is the hard part to understand. It's what each variable and magic number means. A while ago someone had a post of the exponentiation function written with single letter variables. It was difficult to know what it was doing. With proper variable names it would be apparent.

I think what people are asking is basically, could someone convert this to a program that is actually meant to be read, while still maintaining its exact control flow and logic.