Chess

A typical Staunton-design set and clock

Chess is a two-player strategy board game of pure skill and one of the deepest and most complex games commonly played in Western cultures. The number of legal positions in chess is estimated to be 10⁴³; the number of possible games is much larger. Chess is played both recreationally and competitively in clubs, tournaments, on-line, and by mail.

Chess is played on a square board divided into 64 smaller square spaces on which move 16 "white" and 16 "black" pieces controlled by the two players. Sets used for play are commonly made of wood or plastic, though ornamental sets of stone, glass, or metal are often used to decorate homes.

History

Chess originated from the Indian game Chatrang, about 1400 years ago. The game is related to xiangqi (象棋, Chinese Chess) in China, and Shogi in Japan. The game reached Russia via Mongolia, where it was played at the beginning of the 7th century. From India it migrated to Persia, and spread throughout the Islamic world after the Muslim conquest of Persia. It was introduced into Spain by the Moors in the 10th century, where a famous games manuscript covering chess, backgammon, and dice named the Libro de los juegos, was written under the sponsorship of Alphonso X of Spain during the 13th century. Chess reached England in the 11th century, and evolved through various versions such as Courier.

By the end of the 15th century, the modern rules were adopted: pawns gained the option to move two squares on their first move, bishops could move diagonally arbitrarily far (Before, they moved exactly two squares diagonally, jumping over the intervening square.), and the queen was allowed to move arbitrarily far in every direction. making it the most powerful piece (Before, she could only move one square diagonally.).

These changes collectively helped popularize chess by making the action faster-paced. The game in Europe since that time has been almost the same as is played today. The current rules were completely finalized in the early 19th century.

The most popular piece design, the "Staunton" set, was created by Nathaniel Cook in 1849, endorsed by the then leading player Howard Staunton, and officially adopted by FIDE in 1924.

Staunton styled himself the first World Champion of Chess in the 1850's, however he avoided matches against the strongest competitors of his day, most notably Paul Morphy. The first player to stake a legitimate and widely recognized claim to being World Champion was Wilhelm Steinitz in 1866.

The title "Grandmaster" was created by Russian Tsar Nicholas II who first awarded it in 1914 to five players after a tournament in Saint Petersburg which he had funded.

The World Chess Federation (FIDE) was founded in 1924. When the reigning World Champion Alexandre Alekhine died in 1946, FIDE took over the function of organizing World Championship matches. Before that time, sitting champions had been somewhat capricious in determining against whom and on what terms they would accept a challenge match. FIDE also assumed the role of awarding the titles Grandmaster and International Master, as well as eventually assigning numerical ratings to players.

In 1993, in the middle of a cycle of matches to determine the World Champion, Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short broke with FIDE to organize their own match for the title. They complained of corruption and a lack of professionalism within FIDE, and formed a competing Professional Chess Association. Since then there have been two simultaneous World Champions of approximately equal illegitimacy.

Kasparov, then ranked number one in the world, played a match against IBM's chess computer Deep Blue in 1996 and won; the six-game rematch in 1997 was won by the machine, which was subsequently retired by IBM.

In May, 2002, several leaders in the chess world met in Prague and signed a unity agreement which should insure the crowning of an undisputed world champion by 2003, and restore the traditional cycle of qualifying matches by 2005. The semifinalists for the 2003 championship are Vladimir Kramnik vs. Peter Leko, and Ruslan Ponomariov vs. Kasparov.

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Subject overview

• History of chess
  • Origins of chess
  • Chess in early literature
  • Early arabic chess literature
  • Modern chess
  • Tournament history
  • Cox-Forbes theory
  • Famous entities with chess related names
• Famous chess players
  • Famous people who played chess
  • Grandmasters
  • World chess champions
  • National chess champions
• Rules of chess - Official FIDE rules
  • Equipment: Chessboard, Chess pieces, Game clock
  • The Movement of the Pieces: Bishop, King, Knight, Pawn, Queen, Rook, Castling
  • Notation: Algebraic chess notation, Descriptive chess notation
  • Tournament organization
  • Administrative bodies
    • Federation Internationale des Echecs - Official FIDE Website
• Chess strategy and tactics - basic concepts
  • Sample chess game
  • Tactical elements: Fork, Pin
  • Strategic elements: Chess openings
  • Middle games: Hypermodernism
  • Endgames
• Chess problems and puzzles
  • Composition chess
    • Sam Loyd
  • Other puzzles: Knight's Tour, Eight queens puzzle
• Chess and the computer
  • Internet Chess Club
  • Deep Blue
  • Deep Fritz
• Chess literature
  • Chess libraries
• Chess in literature and the arts
  • Through the Looking-Glass, Danse Macabre, The Luzhin Defence
  • The site http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/7378/lit.htm lists 515 chess stories.
• Chess variants:
  • Handicap variants
  • Fantasy variants
  • National games: Shogi (Japan), Xiangqi (China), Janggi (Korea), Makruk (Thailand)

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For secondary uses of the word "chess" see

• Chess (musical)
• Chess Records