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Chess

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For secondary uses of the word "chess" see

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Subject overview

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A typical Staunton-design set and clock

Chess is a two-player strategy game of pure skill and one of the deepest and most complex games commonly played in Western cultures (the games of Go and Shogi hold similar places in Asian cultures). It is nonetheless also the most popular board game in the West, played both recreationally and competitively in clubs, tournaments, on-line, and by mail.

It is played on a square board divided into 64 smaller squares 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.

The number of legal positions in chess is estimated to be 1043; the number of possible games is much larger and greatly exceeds the estimated number of particles in the observable universe.

History

Chess originated from the Indian game Shatranj, 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 Libros de las 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), 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.

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

Strategy and Tactics

Some rules of thumb for playing well are given in the Chess strategy and tactics article. Also, a sample game gives examples of how pieces move and capture, as well as an introdution to the thought processes of chess players.

The World of Chess

Lists of World Champions and famous players are available.

The world organization of chess players is the FIDE which organizes regular world chess championships. In recent years, some players complained about arbitrary decisions by FIDE and left to start competing organizations.

Strong players are awarded the lifetime titles "International Master" and "Grandmaster" by FIDE according to well-defined rules.

Famous people who were avid chess players

Computer chess

Chess enthusiasts and computer engineers have attempted to build, with increasing degrees of seriousness and success, chess-playing machines for over a century. Their motivations can essentially be consolidated into two: firstly, to build a machine to play chess with for solo entertainment, and secondly, to investigate chess as a problem which might provide some insight into human cognition. In this view, the history of computer chess is both a spectactular success and a virtually complete failure. Chess-playing computers are available for negligible cost, and even the free gnuchess software plays a game that, with the aid of virtually any modern personal computer can defeat most master players under tournament conditions. However, to the surprise and disappointment of many, chess has taught us little about building machines that offer human-like intelligence, or indeed do anything except play excellent chess.

  • fill in early history etc.*

In May 1997, a computer (IBM's updated Deep Blue) defeated the then reigning world champion Gary Kasparov in a match. IBM keeps a web site of the event at http://www.chess.ibm.com. While not an official world championship, the outcome of the match is often taken to mean that the strongest player in the world is a computer. Such a claim is open to strong debate. Firstly, there are other players whose playing style is recognised as more effective against other computer opponents. Secondly, it was impossible for Kasparov to prepare to play the machine as he would against a human opponent, as the computer's programming was adjusted between prior matches and the Kasparov match. If the machine's programming had been left fixed, it would have been easier for Kasparov to figure out and play against the weaknesses of the machine. Thus, a truly fair match is very difficult to arrange. IBM retired Deep Blue after the match and it has not played since. However, given that computer hardware and chess algorithms have continued to improve since 1997 it seems likely that an equivalent effort would produce a computer that was more unambiguously stronger than the best human player.

It should be noted that computer chess is not of great academic interest to researchers in artificial intelligence. Chess-playing programs essentially explore huge numbers of potential future moves by both players and apply a relatively simple evaluation function to the positions that result. Such methods are useless for most other problems artificial intelligence researchers have tackled, and are believed to be very different from how human chess players select their moves. In some strategy games, computers easily win every game, while in others they are regularly beaten even by amateurs. Therefore, the fact that the best efforts of chess masters and computer engineers are so finely balanced should probably be viewed as an amusing quirk of fate rather than the profound comment on thought that many in the past, including some of the early theorists on machine intelligence, thought it to be.

Chess problems and puzzles

The longstanding popularity of chess has paved the way for a rich tradition of chess-related puzzles and composed problems. These puzzles assume a familiarity with the pieces and rules of chess, but set different objectives than a standard game. For example, one might be called upon to deduce the last move played, or the location of a missing piece, or whether some player has lost the right to castle. Sometimes the objective is antithetical to normal chess, such as helping (or even compelling) the opponent to checkmate one's own king.

The most common chess puzzle takes the form of checkmate in N moves. Such puzzles may derive from studies which were intended to help a student of the game learn how to seal a victory, but have since evolved into an entirely separate art. The puzzle positions are seldom similar to positions from actual play, and the challenge is not to find a winning move, but rather to find the (usually unique) move which forces checkmate as rapidly as possible.

See also: Chess variant

Weblinks:

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