Create array from image of chessboard
Well, first of all remember that chess always starts with the same pieces on the same positions e.g. black knight starts at 8-B which can be [1][7] in your 2D array. If I were you I would start with a 2D array with the begin positions of all the chess pieces. 
As to knowing which pieces are where: you do not need to recognize the pieces themselves. What I would do if I were you is detect the empty spots on the chessboard which is actually quite easy in comparison to really recognizing the different chess pieces. 
Once your detection system detects that one of the previously empty spots is now no longer empty you know that a chess piece was moved there. Since you can also detect a new open spot(the spot where the chess piece came from) you also know the exact chess piece which was moved. If you keep track of this list during the whole game you can always know which pieces are moved and which pieces are where.
Edit:
As noted in the comments my answer was based on chess instead of checkers. The idea is however still the same but instead of chess pieces you can now put men and kings in the 2D array.
Basically, I'm working on a robot arm that will play checkers.
There is a camera attached above the board supplying pictures (or even videomaterial but I guess that is just a series of images and since checkers is not really a fast paced game I can just take a picture every few seconds and go from there)
I need to find a way to translate the visual board into a e.g a 2d array to feed into the A.I to compute the robots moves.
I have a line detection working which draws lines on along the edges of the squares (and also returns edges in canny as a prior step). Moreover I detect green and red (the squares of my board are green and red) and return these both as a mask each. 
I also have a sphere detection in place to detect the position of the pieces and some black and white color detection returning a mask each with the black or white detected areas.
My question is how I can now combine these things I have and as a result get some type of array out of which I can deduct information over in which squares my pieces are ? 
Like how would i build the 2d array (or connect any 8x8) array to the image of the board with the lines and/or the masks of the red/green tiles ? I guess I have to do some type of calibration ?
And secondly is there a way to somehow overlay the masks so that I then know which pieces are in which squares ?