- For other meanings, see Chess (disambiguation).
Chess is a board game and mental sport for two players. It is played on a square board of 8 rows (called ranks) and 8 columns (called files), giving 64 squares of alternating colour, light and dark, with each player having a light square at his bottom right when facing the board. Each player begins the game with 16 pieces that each move and capture other pieces on the board in a unique way: eight pawns (♙), two knights (♘), two bishops (♗), two rooks (♖), one queen (♕) and one king (♔). One player controls the white pieces; the other player controls the black pieces. The object of the game is to achieve checkmate. This occurs when a king is attacked and it cannot escape capture. Note that checkmate renders the capture of the king unnecessary since it is a foregone conclusion and the game ends at that time.
Introduction
Chess is not a game of chance; it is based solely on tactics and strategy. Nevertheless, the game is so complex that not even the best players can consider all contingencies: although only 64 squares and 32 pieces are on the board, the number of possible games that can be played far exceeds the number of atoms in the universe (see "Shannon number").
Chess is one of the world's most popular games; it has been described not only as a game, but also as an art, science, and sport. Chess is sometimes seen as an abstract wargame; as a "mental martial art", and teaching chess has been advocated as a way of enhancing mental prowess. Chess is played both recreationally and competitively in clubs, tournaments, online, and by mail (correspondence chess). Many variants and relatives of chess are played throughout the world. The most popular, in descending order by number of players, are Xiangqi (in China), Shogi (in Japan), and Janggi (in Korea).
History
- Main article: Origins of chess
Persian youth playing chess with two suitors Illustration to the "Haft Awrang" of Jami, in the story A Father Advises his Son About Love Freer and Sackler Galleries, The Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.
Many countries claim to have invented the chess game in some incipient form. The most commonly held belief is that chess originated in India, where it was called Chaturanga, which appears to have been invented in the 6th century AD.
Another theory exists that chess arose from the similar game of Chinese chess, or at least a predecessor thereof, existing in China since the 2nd century B.C. Joseph Needham and David Li are two of many scholars who have favored this theory.
Chess eventually spread westward to Europe and eastward as far as Japan, spawning variants as it went. From India it migrated to Persia, where its terminology was translated into Persian, and its name changed to chatrang.
From Persia it entered the Islamic world, where the names of its pieces largely remained in their Persian forms in early Islamic times. Its name became shatranj, which continued in Spanish as ajedrez and in Greek as zatrikion, but in most of Europe was replaced by versions of the Persian word shāh = "king".
There is a theory that this name replacement happened because, before the game of chess came to Europe, merchants coming to Europe brought ornamental chess kings as curiosities and with them their name shāh, which Europeans mispronounced in various ways.
- checkmate: This is the English rendition of shāh māt, which is Persian for "the king is ambushed". Despite some reports to the contrary, it is not Arabic for "the king is dead".
- rook: This came via Arabic from the Persian rukh, which means "chariot", but also means "cheek" (part of the face), and the mythical bird of great power called the roc.
- bishop. Arabic al-fīl ( from Persian Pil ) means "the elephant", but in Europe and the western part of the Islamic world people knew little or nothing about elephants, and the name of the chessman entered Western Europe as Latin alfinus and similar, a word with no other meaning (in Spanish, for example, it evolved to the name "alfil"). The English name "bishop" is a rename inspired by the conventional shape of the piece. In Russia, the piece is, however, known as slon, that is, "the elephant."
- queen. Persian farzīn = "vizier" became Arabic firzān, which entered western European languages as forms such as alfferza, fers, etc but was later replaced by "queen".
Two oldtimers playing chess on a Central Park bench in New York City, May 1946.
The game spread throughout the Islamic world after the Muslim conquest of Persia. Chess eventually reached Russia via Mongolia, where it was played at the beginning of the 7th century. It was introduced into Spain by the Moors in the 10th century, described in a famous manuscript covering chess, backgammon, and dice named the Libro de los juegos.
Modern chess
A typical Staunton-design set and clock
Early on, the pieces in European chess had limited movement; bishops could only move by jumping exactly two spaces diagonally, the queen could move only one space diagonally, pawns could not move two spaces on their first move, and there was no castling. By the end of the 15th century, the modern rules for the basic moves had been adopted from Italy: pawns gained the option of moving two squares on their first move and the en passant capture therewith, bishops acquired their modern move, and the queen was made the most powerful piece; consequently modern chess is referred to as "Queen's Chess" or "Mad Queen Chess." The game in Europe since that time has been almost the same as is played today. The current rules were finalized in the early 19th century, except for the exact conditions for a draw.
The most popular piece design, the "Staunton" set, was created by Nathaniel Cook in 1849, endorsed by Howard Staunton, a leading player of the time, and officially adopted by Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE) in 1924.
Chess's international governing body is FIDE, which has presided over the world championship matches for decades. See World Chess Championship for details and a more in-depth history. Most countries of the world have a national chess organization as well. Although chess is not an Olympic sport, it has its own Olympiad, held every two years as a team event.
Notation
Until the 1970s, at least in English-speaking countries, chess games were recorded and published using descriptive chess notation. This has been supplanted by the more compact algebraic chess notation. Several notations have emerged, based upon algebraic chess notation, for recording chess games in a format suitable for computer processing. Of these, Portable Game Notation (PGN) is the most common. Apart from recording games, there is also a notation Forsyth-Edwards Notation for recording specific positions. This is useful for adjourning a game to resume later or for conveying chess problem positions without a diagram.
Computer chess
- Main article: Computer chess
Once solely the province of the human mind, chess is now played by both humans and machines. At first considered only a curiosity, the best chess playing programs like Shredder or Fritz have risen in ability to the point where they can seriously challenge and even defeat the best humans, and regularly defeat the average human Grandmaster.
Garry Kasparov, then ranked number one in the world, played a six-game match against IBM's chess computer Deep Blue in February 1996. Deep Blue shocked the world by winning the first game in Deep Blue - Kasparov, 1996, Game 1, but Kasparov convincingly won the match by winning three games and drawing two.
The six-game rematch in May 1997 was won by the machine (informally dubbed Deeper Blue) which was subsequently retired by IBM. The other programs running on general purpose hardware are generally weaker than Deep Blue was, but catching up, as computers get faster. In October 2002, Vladimir Kramnik drew in an eight-game match with the computer program Deep Fritz. In 2003, Kasparov drew both a six-game match with the computer program Deep Junior in February, and a four-game match against X3D Fritz in November.
The chess machine Hydra is the intellectual descendant of Deep Blue; and appears to be somewhat stronger than Deep Blue was. Certainly it is very much comparable in terms of positions analysed per second. Given the relative ease with which it beats the other programs, and the humans it has met, Hydra may be expected to beat any unaided human player in match play. In June 2005, Hydra scored a decisive victory over the then 7th ranked GM Michael Adams winning five games and drawing one game in a six game match.
Kasparov's loss to Deep Blue has inspired the creation of chess variants in which human intelligence can still overpower computer calculation. In particular Arimaa, which is played upon a standard 8×8 chessboard, is a game at which humans can beat the best efforts of programmers so far, even at fast time controls.
More information
- Rules of chess
- Equipment: Chessboard, Chess pieces, Game clock
- Movement of the pieces: Bishop, King, Knight, Pawn, Queen, Rook, Castling
- Demonstration game
- Chess game stages: opening, middlegame, endgame
- Chess strategy and tactics
- Tactical elements: Fork, Pin, Skewer, Discovered attack, Zwischenzug, Undermining, Overloading, Interference
- Middle games: Hypermodernism
- Chess terminology
- Chess problems and puzzles
- Chess variants - chess with different rules, board or pieces; historical or national chess-like games.
- Ways to play chess: Correspondence chess, Blitz chess, Bullet chess, Chess handicap, Simultaneous chess, Blindfold chess, Human chess
- Internet servers to play chess: Internet Chess Club, FICS, ChessWorld.net, BrainKing.com
Famous chess games
- The immortal game between Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky (1851)
- The evergreen game between Adolf Anderssen and Jean Dufresne (1852)
- The opera game between Paul Morphy and two allies, the Duke of Brunswick and Count Isouard (1858)
- Bowdler - Conway, London, 1788, the first example of the famous double rook sacrifice
- Lasker - Bauer, Amsterdam, 1889, the first example of the famous double bishop sacrifice
- The Game of the Century between Bobby Fischer and Donald Byrne (1956)
- Match of the Century between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, 1972.
- Deep Blue - Kasparov, 1996, Game 1, the first game where a chess-playing computer defeated a reigning world champion using normal time controls (1996)
- Deep Blue - Kasparov, 1997, Game 6, the last game of the 1997 rematch, which Deep Blue won, making it the first computer to defeat a world champion in a match over several games.
- Kasparov versus The World, in which the reigning world champion played, via the Internet, against the entire rest of the world in consultation (1999)
- Kasparov - Topalov, Wijk aan Zee, 1999, rook sacrifice with a 15+ moves forced sacrificial combination, one of the most commented chess games ever, huge press coverage.
History of chess
World chess champions
- Main article: World Chess Championship
Unofficial but widely recognized as Champions (pre-championship era):
Official Champions:
Unofficial but widely accepted as current World Champion:
FIDE World Champions after Garry Kasparov:
Chess literature
Chess in the arts and literature
Computer chess
References
- The Oxford Companion to Chess, David Hooper und Kenneth Whyld, Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, 1996. ISBN 0192800493.
- The Complete Idiot's Guide to Chess, Patrick Wolff, Alpha, 2nd edition, 1991, ISBN 0028641825.
- The Game of Chess, Siegbert Tarrasch, Hays Publishing, 1994, ISBN 1880673940.
External links
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