Chess is a two-player strategy board game played on a chessboard, a square checkered gameboard with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.
Each player begins the game with sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, and eight pawns. Each of the six piece types moves differently. Pieces are used to attack and capture the opponent's pieces, with the objective to 'checkmate' the opponent's king by placing it under an inescapable threat of capture. In addition to checkmate, the game can be won by the voluntary resignation of the opponent, which typically occurs when too much material is lost, or if checkmate appears unavoidable. A game may also result in a draw in several ways, where neither player wins. The course of the game is divided into three phases: opening, middlegame, and endgame.
The first official World Chess Champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, claimed his title in 1886; the current World Champion is Viswanathan Anand. In addition to the World Championship, there are the Women's World Championship, the Junior World Championship, the World Senior Championship, the Correspondence Chess World Championship, the World Computer Chess Championship, and Blitz and Rapid World Championships. The Chess Olympiad is a popular competition among teams from different nations. Online chess has opened amateur and professional competition to a wide and varied group of players. Chess is a recognized sport of the International Olympic Committee and international chess competition is sanctioned by the World Chess Federation (FIDE), which adopted the now-standard Staunton chess set in 1924 for use in all official games. There are also many chess variants, with different rules, different pieces, and different boards.
Since the second half of the 20th century, computers have been programmed to play chess with increasing success, to the point where home computers can play chess at a very high level. In the past two decades computer analysis has contributed significantly to chess theory, particularly in the endgame. The computer Deep Blue was the first machine to overcome a reigning World Chess Champion when it defeated Garry Kasparov in 1997.
Read more about Chess: Rules, Notation For Recording Moves, Strategy and Tactics, Composition, Publications, Mathematics and Computers, Psychology, Variants
Other articles related to "chess":
... Yousof (Younnus, Younus) Safvat (born 1931 in Tehran - death 2003 in Tehran) was an Iranian chess player ... He was the first official chess champion and national master of Iran ... He won four times Iranian Chess Championship (1956, 1957, 1959, 1965), and represented Iran in Chess Olympiads at Moscow 1956, Munich 1958, Varna 1962, Tel Aviv 1964, and ...
... For the more complicated game of chess, it appears the method was independently rediscovered later by the Kaissa team in the Soviet Union in the late 1960s, although not publicly documented, and again by the ... Northwestern University program "Chess" in the early 1970s, and documented in 1977 in "Chess Skill in Man and Machine" ...
... As a child, he was a chess prodigy ... to have maintained his sanity by playing chess against himself in his mind ... Sharansky beat the world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a simultaneous exhibition in Israel in 1996 ...
... The Italian Game is a family of chess openings beginning with the moves 1 ... Bc4 The Italian Game is one of the oldest recorded chess openings it occurs in the Göttingen manuscript and was developed by players such as Damiano and Polerio in the 16th century, and later ... for a long-term advantage, but the Italian is still popular in correspondence chess, where players are allowed access to published theory, and in games between amateurs ...
... been one of the greatest composers of chess endgame studies ... He was awarded the titles of International Judge of Chess Compositions in 1956 and International Grandmaster of Chess Composition in 1972, the first ... Kasparyan was also an active chess player, winning the Armenian championship ten times (from 1934 to 1956, including two ties with future World Champion Tigran ...
Famous quotes containing the word chess:
“Women’s childhood relationships with their fathers are important to them all their lives. Regardless of age or status, women who seem clearest about their goals and most satisfied with their lives and personal and family relationships usually remember that their fathers enjoyed them and were actively interested in their development.”
—Stella Chess (20th century)
“Remember...that each child is a separate person, yours forever, but never fully yours. She can never be all you wished or wanted, or all you know she could be. But she will be a better human being if you can let her be herself.”
—Stella Chess (20th century)
“But compared with the task of selecting a piece of French pastry held by an impatient waiter a move in chess is like reaching for a salary check in its demand on the contemplative faculties.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)